






°«* 






;•: %/ 



c, 









\* v*cr 



<. 



•0^ 



,o 



6* 












^o* 













<*± a? *L^L> ^ v . « • «, o 








A/**. 









i^J^L^sL+U^-J^ 



0" 






L£- r. //?' ■ 



i-~N%\, 




i $ 


i#eI?NK 








f 


Im* >^j 


.^ 






^^li , 




JwN 






PP^T / 








ADDRESSES 



COMMEMORATIVE OF 



Abeaham Lincoln 



JOHN P. HALE 



DELIVERED BY 

DANIEL HALL 

OF DOVER, N. H. 



WITH A BIOGRAPHY AND OTHER SPEECHES AND WRITINGS OF 
THE ORATOR. 



CONCORD, N. H 
October, 1892. 






PRINTED BY 

REPUBLICAN PRESS ASSOCIATION, 

CONCORD, N. H. 

1892. 



PREFACE. 



Col. Daniel Hall's complete and masterly oration on the 
Capitol grounds in Concord, New Hampshire, on August 
3, 1892, at the unveiling of the statue of that pioneer of 
freedom, Senator John P. Hale, then presented to the state 
by Senator William E. Chandler of Concord, is printed in 
the state's memorial volume. It is also reproduced in this 
form, preceded by Col. Hall's vivid eulogy on Abraham 
Lincoln delivered before the Lincoln Club of New Hamp- 
shire at Concord on February 16, 1887, and accompanied 
by a biography of Col. Hall, which is substantially that 
of his friend, Rev. Dr. Alonzo H. Quint, first published 
in Col. John B. Clarke's " Sketches of Successful New 
Hampshire Men," and also by other speeches and writings 
of the orator. 

The present compilation is issued as a tribute to Col. 
Hall from Senator Chandler, to whom his modest friend's 
full learning, powerful memory, intense industry, unsur- 
passable oratorical gifts, and other varied mental attain- 
ments have always been a wonder and admiration. 

Concord, N. H., October, 1892. 



BIOGBAPHY 



COLONEL DANIEL HALL. 



Daniel Hall was born in the town of Barrington, N. H., 
February 28, 1832, and is the descendant of generations 
of farmers. His first known American ancestor was John 
Hall, who came to Dover, N. H., in 1649, with his brother 
Ralph, from Charlestown, Mass. Of this blood was the 
mother of Gov. John Langdon, Tobias Lear (Washington's 
private secretary), and others of like energy. This emi- 
grant, John Hall, was the first recorded deacon of the 
Dover First Church, was town clerk, commissioner to try 
causes, and a farmer, but mainly surveyor of lands. A 
spring of deliciously cool water, still known as "Hall's 
Spring," marks the locality of his residence 240 years ago 
on Dover Neck. His son Ralph was of Dover, a farmer ; 
whose son Ralph, also a farmer, was one of the early set- 
tlers of Barrington ; whose son Solomon, also a farmer, was 
of the same town ; whose son Daniel, also a farmer, was 
father of Gilman Hall, who was father of nine children, 
the subject of this sketch being his first-born. Gilman 
Hall was early a trader in Dover, but for twenty-five years 
subsequently was farmer and trader in Barrington, his 
native town, on the stage road, known as the " Waldron's 
Hill " road. He was a bright, active, and highly capable 
man, selectman, and representative for many years. 

Daniel Hall's mother was Eliza Tuttle, a descendant of 
John Tuttle of Dover, who was judge of the superior court 
for many years prior to the year 1700. 

The picturesque old house in which Daniel Hall was 
born, built by one Hunking, was till a year or two since 



6 BIOGRAPHY OF DANIEL HALL. 

still standing near Winkley's pond, on the Nashua & Roch- 
ester Railroad, the oldest house in town, and a quaint and 
venerable landmark, but unoccupied and in a ruinous con- 
dition. 

With the exception of what he thinks " the best father 
and mother that ever lived," Daniel Hall had few early 
advantages. His life as a boy was on the farm. He went 
to the district school a long distance, through snows and 
heats, and by and by helped in the country store. When 
older, from fourteen years onward, he drove a team to 
Dover, with wood and lumber, and sold his loads, standing 
on Central square. But he had a passion for books, and a 
burning desire for an education. He learned all he could 
get in the short district schools, and when about sixteen 
years of age he secured two terms, about six months in all, 
in Strafford Academy, — one term under Ira F. Folsom 
(D. C. 1848), and one under Rev. Porter S. Burbank. In 
1849 he was one term at the N. H. Conference Seminary, 
in Northfield (now Tilton), under Rev. Dr. Richard S. 
Rust. Then, for satisfactory reasons, he gave up all acad- 
emies, returned home, sat himself down alone to his Latin, 
Greek, and mathematics, and with indomitable persever- 
ance prepared for college. He entered Dartmouth in 1850, 
undoubtedly the poorest fitted of his class ; but he had the 
fitting of a determined will, unconquerable industry, a keen 
intellect, and the fibre of six generations of open-air ances- 
tors, and in 1854 he was graduated at the head of his class, 
and was valedictorian. It is needless to say, perhaps, that 
the oldest of nine children had to practise economy and 
teach district schools five winters in his native town ; and 
that what small advances he had from his father were 
repaid, to the last dollar, from his first earnings. 

In the fall of 1854 he was appointed a clerk in the New 
York custom-house, and held the position for three years. 
He had taken an early interest in politics, being by educa- 
tion a Democrat. But he had always been radically anti- 
slavery in sentiment. He rebelled against the Kansas- 



BIOGRAPHY OF DANIEL HALL. 7 

Nebraska bill ; and he alone in the custom-house, fearless 
of the probable result to himself, openly denounced the 
Lecompton constitution policy of Buchanan, and supported 
Douglas. In consequence he was removed from office in 
March, 1858. 

Returning to Dover he resumed the study of law — which 
he had commenced in New York — in the office of the emi- 
nent lawyer, Daniel M. Christie, and on that gentleman's 
motion was admitted to the bar in Strafford county at the 
May term, 1860. He held Mr. Christie in the highest rev- 
erence and respect, which, upon his decease in 1876, was 
manifested by an address upon his life and character deliv- 
ered before the court, and subsequently printed. It was 
regarded as an eloquent and appreciative tribute to Mr. 
Christie's remarkable qualities of manhood, and extraordi- 
nary powers as a lawyer. 

Upon his admission to the bar, Mr. Hall opened an office 
in Dover, and commenced practice. In the spring of 1859, 
just before the state election, in view of the great crisis 
coming upon the country, he (as did also Judge Charles 
Doe at the same time) withdrew from the Democratic party 
and cast in his allegiance with the Republicans. With 
them, where his conscience and political principles alike 
placed him, has his lot been cast ever since ; and his ser- 
vices, in later and critical years, have had an important 
bearing upon New Hampshire's political destinies. 

In 1859 he was appointed, by the governor and council, 
school commissioner for Strafford county, and was re- 
appointed in 1860. His early training in the country dis- 
trict school, his work as master in the winters, and his 
hard-earned higher education qualified him eminently for 
the practical duties of this office. 

In the autumn of 1861 he was appointed secretary of the 
United States senate committee to investigate the surrender 
of the Norfolk navy-yard. This committee consisted of 
John P. Hale, Andrew Johnson, and James W. Grimes. 
Soon after, he was appointed clerk of the senate committee 



8 BIOGRAPHY OF DANIEL HALL. 

on naval affairs, at Washington, of which Mr. Hale was 
chairman. He served a few months in this capacity, but 
wished for more active participation in the great struggle 
then in progress. The conflict, which had its symptoms in 
the Lecompton strife, had become war, and the young man 
who had then surrendered office for principles was ready 
for a still greater sacrifice. In March, 1862, he was com- 
missioned aide-de-camp and captain in the regular army, 
and assigned to duty with Gen. John C. Fremont ; but 
before he had time to join him, Gen. Fremont had retired 
from command, and Capt. Hall was transferred to the staff 
of Gen. A. W. Whipple, then in command, at Arlington 
Heights, of the troops and works in front of Washington, 
on the south side of the Potomac. In September, 1862, in 
the Antietam campaign, he, with Gen. Whipple, joined the 
Army of the Potomac, and eventually marched with it to 
the front at Fredericksburg. On the 13th of December, 
1862, he was in the battle of Fredericksburg, crossing the 
river with the third corps, and taking part in the sanguin- 
ary assault upon the works which covered Marye's Heights. 

At the battle of Chancellorsville he was in the column 
sent out to strike Jackson's flank or rear, on his celebrated 
flank march, and in the gallant action of the third division 
of the third corps, under Gen. Whipple, and was with that 
lamented officer when he fell mortally wounded. 

Capt. Hall was then assigned to the staff of Gen. Oliver 
O. Howard, commanding the eleventh corps, and with him 
participated in the campaign and battle of Gettysburg. On 
the second day of the engagement he was slightly wounded 
by a shell. He remained with the eleventh corps, serving 
in various staff capacities, till it was ordered West. 

In the latter part of 1863 his health gave way, and he 
was forced to leave the Army of the Potomac in December 
of that year. But, in June, 1864, he was appointed provost- 
marshal of the first New Hampshire district, being stationed 
at Portsmouth, and here he remained until the close of the 
war. The affairs of the office were in some confusion, but 



BIOGKAPHY OF DANIEL HALL. 9 

his methodical habits soon reduced it to order. During 1 his 
term of service he enlisted or drafted, and forwarded over 
four thousand men to the army. This service, which ceased 
in October, 1865, was marked by signal ability, integrity, 
and usefulness to the government. " He was one of the 
men," said a substitute broker, " that no man dared ap- 
proach with a crooked proposition, no matter how much 
was in it." 

Mr. Hall resumed the practice of law in Dover, but was, 
in 1866, appointed clerk of the courts for Strafford county, 
and, in 1868, judge of the police court for the city of Dover. 
The duties were performed with his usual ability and jus- 
tice, but, in 1874, the Democratic party (being in power) 
" addressed " him out of both offices. Meantime he was 
judge-advocate in the military of New Hampshire under 
Gov. Smyth, and held a position on the staff of Gov. Harri- 
man, which gave him his usual title of colonel. 

Col. Hall had long taken a deep interest in political 
affairs. To him they represented principles. In 1873 he 
was president of the Republican state convention at Con- 
cord. He had been for some years a member of the state 
committee when, in December, 1873, his abilities as a leader 
and executive were recognized in his selection as chairman 
of that committee. He so remained till 1877, and con- 
ducted the campaigns, state and national, of 1874, 1875, 
and 1876. These were critical years for the Republican 
party. The nearly even balance of parties in New Hamp- 
shire, the vigor and intensity with which the battles are 
always fought, and the skill necessary in every department, 
demanded abilities and energies of the highest order. The 
years mentioned surpassed ordinary years in political dan- 
ger to the Republicans. It is sufficient to say that Col. 
Hall conducted the last three campaigns to a triumphant 
issue. So decisive were the successive victories that the 
tide was turned permanently, and from that time the state 
has not swerved from her Republican allegiance. 

In 1876 Col. Hall was chairman of the New Hampshire 
2 



10 BIOGRAPHY OF DANIEL HALL. 

delegation to the Republican national convention at Cin- 
cinnati, being chosen at large, unpledged, and with scarce 
a dissenting vote. He voted on the decisive ballot for 
Rutherford B. Hayes. 

In 1876 and 1877 he was, by appointment of Gov. Che- 
ney, reporter of the decisions of the supreme court of New 
Hampshire, and published volumes 56 and 57 of the New 
Hampshire Reports. 

In 1877 he received the appointment of naval officer at 
the port of Boston. This office is coordinate with that of 
collector, upon which it is a check, and, when properly 
administered, is of great value to the country. Col. Hall's 
business habits, his keen insight, his perfect accuracy, and 
the ruling principle of his life to do everything well and 
thoroughly, there came into operation. He quietly mas- 
tered the details as well as the general work of the depart- 
ment. Regularly at his post, his office became a model in 
its management, and was commended in the highest terms 
by the proper officers. When, therefore, his term expired, 
he was reappointed by President Arthur without opposi- 
tion, and remained in office till removed by President 
Cleveland in 1885. 

The office, under his management, performed its func- 
tions to the advantage of the government, participating 
influentially in the collection of many millions of customs 
revenue, and insuring the faithful enforcement of all the 
revenue laws. Under him there was no proscription, politi- 
cal or personal. No subordinate was removed to make way 
for any favorite ; but the force, with some additions made 
necessary by the increase of business, remained substan-, 
tially as he found it. It is believed that, without making 
any high-sounding professions of "reform," the head of the 
naval office, from 1877 to 1886, made a clean official record, 
and gave a practical exhibition of the best kind of civil ser- 
vice by appointing capable men only, and by keeping good 
men in their places, and making no changes among faithful 
subordinates for the personal ends of himself or his friends. 



BIOGRAPHY OF DANIEL HALL. 11 

Col. Hall lias been promiuent for many years in the 
Grand Army of the Republic, and taken great interest in 
the order. He has been judge-advocate and senior vice- 
commander, and is now commander of the Department of 
New Hampshire. 

He drafted the law establishing the New Hampshire Sol- 
diers' Home ; was very active in securing its adoption, and 
has been a member of the board of managers ever since its 
establishment. 

He is a trustee of the Strafford Savings Bank in Dover, 
and attends the First Parish Congregational Church, where 
his emigrant ancestor held office nearly two centuries and 
a half ago. He is a radical teetotaller, and has taken an 
active and life-long interest in the cause of temperance, and 
in the protection of animals. 

Col. Hall married, January 25, 1877, Sophia, daughter 
of Jonathan T. and Sarah (Hanson) Dodge of Rochester, 
and has one son, Arthur Wellesley Hall, born August 30, 
1878. 

Col. Hall has delivered numerous public addresses, as 
occasion demanded, which have exhibited thought, patriot- 
ism, scholarship, and a comprehensive interest in public 
affairs. His oratorical and literary efforts have embraced 
memorial and dedicatory addresses, political speeches, lect- 
ures on literary, educational, and military subjects, articles 
for the press, and eulogies upon Lincoln, Grant, Hale, 
Christie, and others. 

Fidelity to every engagement, good faith to every prin- 
ciple espoused, firmness of purpose, steady industry and 
efficiency in every work undertaken, are his leading charac- 
teristics, and have ensured him a measure of success, fully 
equal to the expectations of a nature not unduly ambitious 
for what are generally esteemed the high prizes in life. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



Me. President: I understand that I am ex- 
pected to occupy a few minutes of your time in 
speaking of "Abraham Lincoln as a Man." The 
theme is too large for me, and crushes me at the 
beginning. It is like speaking of the sun; and as, 
while we stand in the full effulgence of that great 
luminary, flooding the world with its light and 
warmth and life-giving power, it is impossible to 
disentangle and analyze its various and many-hued 
rays of beneficence, so is it difficult to emphasize 
any separate aspects of this illustrious and many- 
sided character. The mere character of a great 
man not seldom confers greater benefits upon the 
nation, and upon the epoch in which he lives, than 
any, or even all, of his specific achievements. I 
have sometimes thought that such was the ministry 
to us of the life of Abraham Lincoln; for though it 
was given to him to connect his name inseparably 
with some of the greatest events in our history, — 
the overthrow of the Rebellion, the maintenance of 
the Union, the emancipation of the slave, — yet when 
we consider the great moral authority his name has 
gained, the ideas and associations that cluster about 
that unique individuality, how his influence and ex- 
ample and precepts have uplifted this people in their 
whole being, it seems as if he had brought a new 



14 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

force into our national life ; had set in motion a train 
of benign influences which is to go on without limit, 
so that in future his age is to form a new date and 
point of departure in our political calendar. 

So familiar is his personality to us that we scarcely 
need to know more of him; and yet I think all of us 
must be reading with deep interest the new Life of 
Lincoln, which is appearing in "The Century," 
and throwing fresh light upon his origin, his educa- 
tion, and his early career. There was a special fit- 
ness in the birth, amid the poorest and harshest 
surroundings, of him whose destiny it was to assert 
for his country and his age the divine right, not of 
kings, but of humanity, — the essential equality of 
men, and their right to an untrammelled liberty and 
an unfettered pursuit of happiness. No training in 
the schools entered into his preparation for his great 
work, but he lived the life of the broad West, breath- 
ing its free and invigorating air, and thus developed 
a sterling manhood, health of body, and strength of 
limb, truth in every word and deed, and a clearness 
of vision and moral intrepidity which the schools 
cannot supply. Thus reared, amid humble and 
simple surroundings, he " mewed his mighty youth " 
in warfare upon 

" The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil, 
The iron bark that turns the lumberer's axe, 
The rapid that o'erbears the boatman's toil, 
The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks, 

" The ambushed Indian and the prowling bear, — 
Such were the needs that helped his youth to train : 
Rough culture — but such trees large fruit may bear, 
If but their stocks bs of right girth and grain." 



ABEAHAM LINCOLN. 15 

Iii such a mould his life took on that rough exterior 
and homely garb which shaped it for all time, and 
made him " in his simplicity sublime." 

These struggles of pioneer life were the bracing 
on of the armor of Vulcan which equipped him for 
deeds of high emprise; they made him brave and 
true, genuine and sincere, — one to whom duty 
should be first, and the rights of man second; and 
he grew up having in him what our ancestors, with 
awful solemnity, called "the fear of God." To his 
latest day he took on no veneer of polish ; he assum- 
ed no dramatic attitudes for dazzling the eye or 
impressing the imagination, and was guilty of no 
trickeries to cheat the judgment of contemporaries 
or of posterity. 

It is not necessary to trace Mr. Lincoln's path- 
way, step by step, upward toward the high places 
of the world. You are all familiar with the slow 
but sure processes of his growth and advancement. 
His original abilities were of a high order. He saw 
quickly and distinctly. His mind was clear, and 
open to truth as the flowers are to the sunlight and 
the dew. His reasonings were close and sound. 
He was a man of power and effectiveness, and so 
steadily did he grow in public esteem that long 
before his great preferment was dreamed of he en- 
joyed a popular regard almost unparalleled. No 
stronger proof of his intellectual and moral energy 
can be cited than the rapid and strong hold which 
he gained in due time upon the patriotism, the con- 
fidence, and the faith of the country. These ele- 
ments crystallized with an unhesitating abandon 
about his name, and the strength and vitality of the 



16 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

free North took the color of his mind, and became 
charged with his personality. That he was a great 
lawyer, with vigorous powers of logic and compar- 
ison and illustration, and a strong grasp upon legal 
principles, will be shown to yon by another, amply 
competent to present to you that phase of his great- 
ness; and I will not trench upon his province. 

He was also an orator of rare power. Before 
those rather rude audiences of the West, which had 
no fastidiousness, and judged him by no nice stand- 
ard of taste, he was grandly effective, and convinced 
and swayed them with consummate skill. "With them 
he employed, as he did everywhere, those "rugged 
phrases hewn from life," and that inimitable wit and 
genial humor which testified to his real seriousness, 
and the zest and relish with which he entered into 
the life around him. The severe logic, the clear- 
ness and compactness of statement, the moral earn- 
estness which struck a deeper chord even than con- 
viction, — all these appear in some of his speeches 
in congress, and notably in the renowned debate 
between him and Douglas; and in these and his 
casual addresses, more still in his unstudied con- 
versations, there is to be found phrase after phrase 
that has the ring, and the weight, and the sharp 
outline of a bronze coin. But he filled also the 
requisites of a higher and more exacting criticism. 
Though unlearned, and without the graces of the 
schools, he was sometimes gifted Avith the loftiest 
elocnienee. On great occasions, written and spoken 
speech lias rarely risen to higher levels than from 
his lips. Some of his utterances, instinct with sol- 
emn thoughtfulness, and illustrated by beauty of 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 17 

diction, a sententious brevity, and felicitous turns 
of expression, such as the Cooper Institute speech, 
his inaugural addresses, and the oration at Gettys- 
burg, are masterpieces, to live and resound as long- 
as the English tongue survives. 

Mr. Lincoln answered, as I think, another of the 
unerring tests of greatness, in his marked individu- 
ality, and his unique unlikeness to everybody else. 
He had no affectation of singularity, and yet he 
created a distinctness of impression which seems to 
point him out as a type by himself, a distinct spe- 
cies created by the Divine hand in the evolution of 
time. His image on our vision is not a blur, but 
is as distinctly and sharply cut as the outline of a 
cameo, or 

" The dome of Florence drawn on the deep bine sky." 

~No other great man as yet in the least resembles 
him ; and if, my friends, we are so happy one day 
as to meet the shades of the great in the Elysian 
fields, we shall know that exalted spirit at a glance, 
and we shall no more mistake the identity of Abra- 
ham Lincoln than we shall that of Caesar or Crom- 
well or Kapoleon, Washington or Grant. Nature 
stamps her particular sign-manual upon each of 
her supremely great creations, and we may be sure 
that she broke the die in moulding Lincoln. 

To a club which has honored itself by taking his 
great name, an inquiry into Mr. Lincoln's concep- 
tion of politics must ever be a study of the deepest 
interest. In the first place, he was a politician from 
the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, and, 



18 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

himself pure, sober, temperate, chaste, and incor- 
ruptible, he never shrank from what the mawkish 
sentimentality of our day affects to condemn and 
sneer at as the vulgarity of engaging in politics. 
He entered with ardor into the political life around 
him ; he engaged in party caucuses, conventions, 
and gatherings ; he mixed in the political manage- 
ment of his state, his county, his district, his town- 
ship, and received no contamination thereby. He 
conceived this to be the duty of every citizen of a 
free republic, and no word discouraging political 
activity ever fell from his lips. He carried into his 
politics the same morality that he used in his daily 
dealings with clients and friends. He was incapa- 
ble of intrigue, he was true and transparent, and 
no duplicity ever stained his integrity. He studied 
the currents of public opinion, not as a demagogue 
to slavishly follow them, but from a profound con- 
viction that, as to times and means, all men are 
wiser than any one man, and from a real respect 
for the will of the people, to which he ever rendered 
a genuine homage. He sought no power. He was 
too healthy and natural to be disturbed by any 
troubled dreams of a great destiny ; and if he had 
ambition, it was free from vulgar taint. But in 
power he never forgot his trusteeship for the peo- 
ple, and he never lost elbow-touch with those to 
whom he rendered 

" The constant service of the antique world, 
When service sweat for duty, not for meed." 

The world knew, therefore, that glory, or vanity, 
or lust of power had no place in that pure heart. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 19 

"His ends were his country's, his God's, and 
truth's," and thus did he earn the proud title of 

" Statesman, yet friend to truth ! of soul sincere, 
In action faithful, and in honor clear ; 
Who hroke no promise, served no private end, 
Who gained no title, and who lost no friend." 

Therefore, Mr. President, I claim that his whole 
life is a standing reproof to the flippant notion and 
the skeptical and cynical fling that politics is a dis- 
honest game. He was a politician from the outset ; 
and if there is one lesson inculcated here to-day 
by his life and character, it is that politics in a free 
government affords the loft est themes of thought 
and the grandest theatre of action for men of great 
and consecrated powers. He was a striking proof 
that the honestest politics is the best politics, that 
the greatest prizes are gained by unselfish souls, 
and that, in fact, there is in decent politics no room 
for a dishonest man. Here was a man devoted all 
his life to politics in America, with a zeal and in- 
tensity which left him no time for the study of any- 
thing but politics, and the law by which he gained 
his meagre livelihood ; and if, as has been said, 
there is something narrowing in the profession of 
law, and degrading in the pursuit of politics, surely 
Abraham Lincoln did not exemplify it, nor did he, 

" born for the universe, narrow his mind, 



And to party give up what was meant for mankind." 

After his great elevation, his speeches ancl state 
papers #re replete with proofs of his political 



20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

insight, his clearness of vision, and his far-reaching 
views He saw vividly the great considerations 
which determined his duty, and that of his party, 
on the question of disunion. He felt in his own 
breast the pulsations of this mighty land. He saw 
his country and her splendid opportunities for a 
great race of empire, — no oceans or mountains 
dividing, great rivers connecting, a common ori- 
gin, a common history, common traditions, a com- 
mon language, continuity of soil, and a great posi- 
tion in the family of nations which unity alone 
could secure. He rose to the full height of the 
issues involved. He knew that should the South 
succeed in winning independence "the cloth once 
rent would be rent again ; " that there would no 
longer be one America, but many Americas ; that 
the New World would tread over again in the 
bloody tracks of the Old ; that there would be rival 
communities, with rival constitutions, democracies 
lapsing into military despotisms, intrigues, dissen- 
sions, and wars following on wars. Therefore this 
man, so gentle, so mild, so peace-loving, that every 
shot sent a pang to his own heart, could give the 
word of command, and, with unbending will, see 
the United States tear open their veins, and spill 
their blood in torrents that they might remain one 
people. But throughout the sanguinary carnival 
through which he was forced to lead us for four 
long years, Mr. Lincoln's nature remained true 
and tender and forgiving. ~No bitterness and no 
uncharitableness usurped any place in his heart. 
There was nothing local or provincial in his patriot- 
ism. Notwithstanding the insults and contempt 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 21 

lavished upon himself, despite the injury and wrong" 
done to what he held dearer than himself, — the 
Union and the liberty which it made possible, — he 
still enfolded the South in his warmest affections. 
His whole public life is full of evidences of this 
breadth of view, this catholicity of temper, this far- 
reaching statesmanship, this magnanimous and 
Christian spirit. He yearned for peace unceas- 
ingly ; and there can be no doubt that a complete 
pacification and reconciliation on the basis of impar- 
tial liberty was the last and fondest dream of his 
great soul, rudely interrupted by the stroke of the 
assassin. He lived not to realize his great designs, 
yet he fulfilled his historic mission, and what a 
large arc in the completed circle of our country's 
history will his administration embrace ! What 
harvests of martial and civic virtue were garnered 
in ! What a treasure-house of national memories 
and heroic traditions was prepared ! What a new 
and glorious impulse was communicated to the 
national life ! 

What was achieved by his genius and character, 
by that peculiar combination and summary of qual- 
ities of heart and brain and environment which 
make up what we call Abraham Lincoln, we, by 
our finite standards and our partial view of the 
scopes and orbits of human influence, can never 
adequately measure. But some things we see in 
their completeness before our eyes. We gaze with 
admiration upon his pure and upright character, 
his immovable firmness and determination in the 
right, his inexhaustible patience and hopefulness 
under reverses. We remember how steadily these 



22 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

masterful qualities wrought upon the public mind, 
till his quaint wisdom, his disinterestedness, his 
identification with the principles that underlay the 
issues of the Civil War, made his name represent- 
ative of all that was highest and holiest and best 
in the North, and gave it a prestige which alone 
was sufficient to carry us triumphantly through to 
the end. Before this prestige all resistance was 
discomfited, and his was the hand to complete 
and adorn the unfinished temple of our fathers. 
Substituting the corner-stone of Freedom for that 
of Slavery, he built anew the indestructible edifice 
of our Liberty, giving it new proportions of beauty, 
lifting up into the clear blue its towers and pin- 
nacles, white and pure, and crowning all with 
the Emancipation Proclamation as its fitting cap- 
stone. He it was who presided over the strife 
which restored the Union, and " out of the nettle 
Danger plucked the flower Safety." But for that 
great character, raising high above the tumult of 
contending parties its voice of patriotism and mod- 
eration — that moderation which a profound writer 
calls "the great regulator of human intelligence" 
— who shall say that this government would not 
have been rent asunder, and the Ship of State 
foundered with all on board ? There is no differ- 
ence of opinion now as to the grandeur and nobil- 
ity of this service. It was the finishing touch upon 
the work of Washington. Before Lincoln, Wash- 
ington stood alone as the one great typical Amer- 
ican. But now a new planet has come into our 
field of vision, and with him holds its place in our 
clear upper sky. Indeed, it is a significant fact 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 23 

that, as time goes on, our Southern people, who so 
sorely taxed and saddened that great spirit, are 
gaining a love and reverence for him almost tran- 
scending our own. Those whom he reduced to 
obedience are foremost in appreciation of him, so 
that that eloquent son and orator of the ]STew South 
(Henry W. Grady) could rise at the banquet of 
the New England Society of New York on last 
Forefathers' Day, and pay this lofty tribute to his^ 
genius and virtue. 

Said he, "From the union of these colonists, 
from the straightening of their purposes and the 
crossing of their blood, slow perfecting through a 
century, came he who stands as the first typical 
American, the first who comprehended within him- 
self all the strength and gentleness, all the majesty 
and grace, of this republic — Abraham Lincoln. He 
was the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, for in his 
ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and 
in the depths of his great soul the faults of both 
were lost. He was greater than Puritan, greater 
than Cavalier, in that he was American, and that 
in his homely form were first gathered the vast 
and thrilling forces of this ideal government — 
charging it with such tremendous meaning, and so 
elevating it above human suffering that martyr- 
dom, though infamously aimed, came as a fitting 
crown to a life consecrated from the cradle to > 
human liberty." 

This is equally beautiful and true ; and it well 
pays us for waiting to hear it come at last from the 
lips of a Georgian, representing a city so hammered 
and trampled upon by our hosts that scarcely one 



24 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

stone of it was left upon another in the gigantic 

Not less striking, nor less surely the voice of the 
civilized world, were those strains, which, a few 
days after his death, swelled from the harp of 
England through the pages of Punch, which had 
ridiculed and insulted him through life : 

You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, 
You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, 

Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, 

His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face, 

His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, 

His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, 
His lack of all we prize as debonair, 

Of power or will to shine, of art to please, — 

You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, 
Judging each step as though the way were plain; 

Reckless, so it could point its paragraph, 
Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain ! 

Beside this corpse, that bears for winding sheet 
The stars and stripes he lived to rear anew, 

Between the mourners at his head and feet, 
Say, scurril jester, is there room for you? 

Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer ; 

To lame my pencil and confute my pen ; — 
To make me own this hind of princes peer ; 

This rail-splitter a true born king of men. 

My shallow judgment I had learnt to rue, 

Noting how to occasion's height he rose ; 
How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true ; 

How iron-like his temper grew by blows ; 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 25 

How humble, yet how hopeful, he could he ; 

How, in good fortune and in ill, the same ; 
Nor hitter in success, nor boastful he, 

Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame. 

He went about his work — such work as few 
Ever had laid on head, and heart, and hand — 

As one who knows, where there's a task to do, 

Man's honest will must heaven's good grace command. 

Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow, 
That God makes instruments to work his will, 

If but that will we can arrive to know, 

Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill. 

So he went forth to battle, on the side 

That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's, 

As in his peasant boyhood he had plied 

His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights. 



So he grew up a destined work to do, 

And lived to do it ; four long-suffering years' 

Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report lived through. 

And then he heard the hisses change to cheers, 

The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise 

And took both with the same unwavering mood : 

Till, as he came on light, from darking days, 

And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood, 

A felon had, between the goal and him. 

Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest, — 

And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim, 
Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest : 

The words of mercy were upon his lips. 
Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, 

When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse 
To thoughts of peace on earth, good-will to men. 



26 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

The Old World and the New, from sea to sea, 

Utter one voice of sympathy and shame! 
Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high ! 

Sad life, cut short just as the triumph came ! 

A deed accurst ! Strokes have been struck before 
By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt 

If more of horror or disgrace they bore, 

But thy foul crime, like Cain's, shines darkly out. 

Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife, 

Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven, 

And with the martyr's crown crownest a life 
With much to praise, little to be forgiven ! 

Therefore, it is clear that whatever differences 
we are to have hereafter with our brethren of the 
recent strife, and with the races of mankind, we 
are, by common consent, to stand with equal rev- 
erence before him ; and contemplating the life 
onward and upward of this peasant boy, from the 
log cabin to the White House, and the moral dicta- 
torship of the world, I involuntarily bow before the 
inscrutable things of the universe, and exclaim, — 
" Sublime destiny ! to have climbed by his unaided 
energies not only to the summit of earthly power, 
but to the reverence of history, and an undisputed 
dominion over the hearts and minds of posterity in 
all coining ages." 

I have spoken of Mr. Lincoln's plainness and 
simplicity, his abilities and achievements, and his 
relation to politics. Through these he became a 
great factor in the events of his time. But after all, 
I must think the true key to his influence is to be 
sought and found elsewhere. In his incorruptible 



Abraham Lincoln. 27 

purity, his disinterestedness, his inflexible morality, 
his fidelity to convictions, — in short, in his moral 
earnestness, — here were the real hiding-places of 
his power. The world is ever loyal to this lofty 
type of character, and whenever it recognizes a man 
who never does violence to his moral sense, it brings 
him the crown of its allegiance and homage. It 
was Mr. Lincoln's sturdy honesty that gave him 
early the soubriquet of " Honest Abe," which never 
left him; and this it was that winged his speech 
with celestial fire, and made him victor wherever he 
moved. The moral bearings of every question pre- 
sented to him were never out of his mind. In this 
respect, unlike most of the world's great, "his 
wagon " was always " hitched to a star." In fine, 
the elements of intellect, and will, and morality, 
were 

" So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up, 
And say to all the world, This was a Man ! " 

There is one scene in the life of Mr. Lincoln 
which has impressed my imagination beyond any 
other, and I have wondered why some masterly 
artist has never yet seized and thrown it in glowing 
colors and immortal beauty upon some great histor- 
ical canvas. It seems to me it must have been the 
supreme happiness of that weary life, the moment 
when he looked into the dusky faces of his children 
by adoption in the streets of Richmond, from whose 
limbs the fetters had dropped at his touch, whom 
his word had lifted into the gladsome light of liber- 
ty, — "sole passion of the generous heart, sole treas- 
ure worthy of being coveted." 



28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

O my friends, the people did not simply admire 
Abraham Lincoln for his intellectual power, his force 
of will, the purity of his conscience, the rectitude of 
his private and public life; but they loved him as 
little children love their father, because they knew 
that he " loved the people in his heart as a father 
loves his children, ready at all hours of the day or 
the night to rise, to inarch, to fight, to suffer, to 
conquer or to be conquered, to sacrifice himself for 
them without reserve, with his fame, his fortune, 
his liberty, his blood, and his life." 

Great men are like mountains, which grow as 
they recede from view. We are even now, perhaps, 
too near this extraordinary man, as indeed we are 
too near the remarkable events in which he lived 
and fought and won his battle of life, to appreciate 
them in their full significance. His fame in the 
centuries to come will rest, as that of all great men 
must and does, upon certain acts that stand out as 
landmarks in history. Few men have been so for- 
tunate as he is. So canonized is he in the heart of 
mankind, that envy and detraction fall harmless at 
his feet, and stain not the whiteness of his fame. 
There have been many men of daily beauty in life, 
but few such fortunate enough to associate their 
names with great steps in the progress of man — 
fewer still to blend the double glory of the grandest 
public achievement with the tenderest, sweetest, 
gentlest, and simplest private life and thought. 

Not too soon for an abundant glory, but too soon 
for a loving and grateful country, his spirit was 
"touched by the finger of God and he was not," and 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 129 

" The great intelligences fair 

That range above this mortal state, 
In circle round, the blessed gate, 
Received and gave him welcome there." 

As we gather in spirit about his tomb to-day, and 
decorate with unfading amaranth and laurel the 
memory of our great chief, how fitly may we say of 
him what Dixon said of Douglas Jerrold, — "If every 
one who has received a favor at his hands should 
cast a flower upon his grave, a mountain of roses 
would lie on the great man's breast." 

I know, friends, how little words can do to por- 
tray this august personage, and, toiling in vain to 
express the thoughts of him which you and I feel? 
I doubt if it were not better after all, as Mr. Lincoln 
himself said of Washington, to "pronounce his 
name in solemn awe, and in its naked and deathless 
splendor leave it shining on." 

If, now, such a character is a priceless possession 
to this people, how doubly fortunate are they, are 
we, who stood by him through life, and are the in- 
heritors of his principles to-day. Therefore, Mr. 
President, is there a high propriety in this club of 
Republicans associating themselves together about 
the great name of Abraham Lincoln, inspired as 
they must be by the hope and the ambition to emu- 
late those manly traits and those personal virtues 
which so pervaded his nature as to permeate his 
politics and govern his life. He was ours wholly, 
and this club, by adopting his name, in effect de- 
clares him its ideal Republican and political exem- 
plar. In the very name there is fitting inspiration 



30 ABRAHAM LINCOLK. 

to high and noble endeavor, and we should be rec- 
reant to our opportunities and to our best selves — 

" We that have loved him so, followed him, honored him, 
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, 
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, 
Made him our pattern to live, and to die " — 

I say, we should be recreant Republicans, if, under 
the influence of that transcendent name and char- 
acter, the very crown and summit of American 
manhood, we should not rise to a lofty patriotism, 
a high conception of, and a new consecration to, 
political duty, and do our utmost to secure the tri- 
umph of his principles, and to lift our politics up to 
that high standard of honor and dignity which 
guided the steps of the great man whose birthday 
we now celebrate, and which is commemorated 
throughout the civilized world as that of a Patriot, 
Statesman, Hero, and supreme Martyr to Liberty. 



JOHN P. HALE. 



Mr. President and Fellow Citizens : When 
the illusions of military glory, and the delirious 
dream of a universal supremacy, had given way to 
the sober reflections of the philosopher and states- 
man, the august exile of St. Helena said : "I 
wanted no statues, for I knew that there was no 
safety in receiving them at any other hands than 
those of posterity." In a like spirit, Burke also 
deprecated a statue in his life-time, saying that 
such honors belong exclusively to the tomb, and 
that, frequently, such is human inconstancy, the 
same hands which erect pull them down. Thus 
these great men, both with characteristic penetra- 
tion and discernment, touched upon the profound 
truth that every man's work is to be tested by 
time. That is the crucible through which all ser- 
vice is to be passed before it receives its final stamp 
and authentication. But time is a factor whose 
relations to history are readjusted. What required 
an age in an earlier day is now accomplished in a 
generation, by the diffusion of knowledge, the 
rapid circulation of intelligence, the electric rapid- 
ity of all the interchanges of thought and sentiment. 
Men do not wait for ages to be appreciated. By 
these modern instruments of precision, in the quick- 
ening of human sympathies, and the broadening of 



32 JOHN P. HALE. 

intellectual horizons, we measure the mental and 
moral altitude of our great actors, and determine 
their places in the firmament with unerring 1 accu- 
racy, after only that brief lapse of time which suf- 
fices for the subsidence of the passions and pertur- 
bations of contemporary judgment. And so, before 
a generation has passed since a great man was 
gathered to his rest, the people of his state meet, 
in unbroken accord, to do him honor by raising 
here a statue to his memory in the public grounds 
of the commonwealth, under the shadow of its capi- 
tol, whose arches have so often resounded with the 
echoes of his eloquence. 

On the 31st day of March, 1806, New Hamp- 
shire was enriched with one of those rare gifts, 
which, bestowed upon her in unusual plenitude, 
have given her a distinction beyond most other 
states, as the mother of great men. On that day 
John Parker Hale was born in Rochester, of a 
father bearing the same name, a lawyer of brilliant 
promise, and a mother who was the daughter of 
William O'Brien, an Irish exile, who distinguished 
himself by the daring feat of capturing the first 
armed British vessel in the War of the Revolu- 
tion and died a prisoner of war at the early age of 
twenty-three. He was of the heroic stock which 
gave birth to William Smith O'Brien. It is hardly 
more than idle speculation to fancy that we always 
find in race or pedigree the source of special traits 
in a great character ; but those who are curious to 
trace the characteristics of genius back to ances- 
tral blood, have readily found Mr. Hale's practical 
turn of mind, sound sense, coolness and phlegm in 



JOHN P. HALE. 33 

his sturdy Anglo-Saxon father, and the wit and 
humor, warmth and rhetorical fervor which marked 
his speech and temperament, in his mother's Celtic 
ancestors. Mr. Hale's father died in 1819 at the 
early age of forty-four, leaving an honorable name, 
but to his mother little of this world's goods where- 
with to care for a numerous family of children, of 
whom Mr. Hale was the second, and but thirteen 
years of age. But she was equal to the duty 
imposed upon her. She nurtured her brood with 
singular care and industry, and had the satisfaction 
of living to see her son enter upon a career of 
assured professional success, and also into the 
political life which was afterwards so distinguished. 
She died in 1832 at the age of fifty-two years. 
Through all his life Mr Hale loved and honored 
this noble mother with a rare devotion, serving her 
with a knightly loyalty in his youth, and in his days 
of renown, when he was an illustrious United States 
senator and the peer of any living American, he 
made a most touching allusion to her in the debate 
upon Gen. Cass's resolution of sympathy with the 
exiled Irish patriots. Said he, "Sir, my mother, 
many years dead, was the only child of an Irish 
exile. His name was O'Brien, and I should feel, 
if in this place, or in any place, whenever or wher- 
ever a word of sympathy is to be expressed for an 
Irish exile and an O'Brien, that I should be false 
to every pulsation of my heart, to every drop of 
blood that flows in these veins, and to that which 
no man can be false to, a deceased mother, if I did 
not express it. !No, sir, let whatever consequences, 
personal or political, stand in the way, so long as 



34 JOHN P. HALE. 

the blood of my mother flows in my veins, and so 
long as I remember who I am, and what I am, 
whatever words of sympathy, of counsel, or of 
encouragement an Irish exile can have, that he shall 
have from me." 

But few of the contemporaries of Mr. Hale's 
youth survive, and it is difficult to present any 
but an imperfect record of the circumstances amid 
which he reached maturity, the processes by which 
he was prepared for his destined work, and the 
forces which determined the course and complex- 
ion of his career. But it is certain that he was a 
bright, active, quick, witty, kind, generous, cour- 
ageous, and helpful boy. His mother's exertions 
kept him at school, and he was enabled at an early 
age to get a term or two of preparatory study at 
Exeter under Principal Abbot, who boasted some 
years after that he had five of his boys in the 
United States senate, " and pretty good boys, 
too,"— Webster, Cass, Hale, Dix, and Felch. He 
entered Bowdoin college in 1823, and was there a 
contemporary and friend of Franklin Pierce, 
Nathaniel Hawthorne, and other distinguished 
men. He was graduated there in 1827, with a 
high reputation for general ability and off-hand 
oratorical power. He read law at Rochester and 
at Dover, where he finished his legal studies under 
the tuition of the late Daniel M. Christie, for many 
years the honored head of the New Hampshire 
bar. As a law student he displayed all his char- 
acteristic traits of quickness, aptitude, ease of 
acquisition, and tenacity of memory ; so that both 
his instructors, Mr. Woodman and Mr. Christie, 



JOHN P. HALE. 35 

formed the highest hopes of him, and confidently 
predicted his future eminence. To all who knew 
him it was evident that he was fitted to play a 
great part in the world, and was the possessor of 
powers of which his country had a right to demand 
an account. From his earliest youth he manifested 
the activity of his intellect, and read with interest 
the classics of our literature, and especially the 
great orators of ancient and modern times. Admit- 
ted to the bar and opening an office at Dover in 
1830, he at once took high rank in the profession. 
His entrance into practice realized the highest 
hopes of his friends ; he soon gained a large client- 
age, and within a few years became known as one 
of the most astute lawyers and eloquent advocates 
at the ~New Hampshire bar. He had consummate 
skill and tact in handling witnesses, rare keenness in 
discerning the points at issue and adroitness in 
meeting them, and extraordinary power before 
juries in both criminal and civil cases. In the ear- 
lier years of his practice he was often the leading 
counsel against Mr. Christie and others not less 
distinguished, and his appeals to the jury gave full 
scope to his unrivalled wit and humor, his indigna- 
tion against wrong, and pathos in defence of the 
rights of humanity. 

As a lawyer, Mr. Hale from the outset mani- 
fested the democratic tendencies of his mind and 
character. He believed in the people, and was 
jealous of every encroachment upon popular rights. 
Before his entrance upon the national arena he 
made a stand in the supreme court of New Hamp- 
shire for the right of the jury to be judges of the 



36 JOHSi P. HALE. 

law as well as the facts in criminal cases, and had a 
warm controversy on the subject with the late 
Chief-Justice Joel Parker. He published a pam- 
phlet on the question which was a remarkable pro- 
duction, showing great research and polemical 
skill, and it is scarcely extravagant to style it a 
monument to his acquirements as a lawyer. It 
contains well-nigh all the learning on a question of 
the deepest importance in its day, which has been 
substantially settled at last by the ameliorations of 
the criminal law, the progress of society, and the 
growth of the institutions of liberty. Although 
Mr. Hale was not distinguished for recondite learn- 
ing, this publication exhibited too complete a 
mastery of authorities to be dashed off at a sitting, 
too profound an argument to have been prepared 
in a day. This debate is chiefly interesting today 
as proof that Mr. Hale had unquestionably devoted 
time in his early years to the study of the great 
books of the common law, to the history and 
development of English liberty, and was deeply 
grounded in its leading principles. Judge Parker 
replied through the 'New Hampshire Reports in 
Peirce et al. v. State, 13 N". H. 536. An .examina- 
tion of these reports from Vol. 6 to 17, inclusive, 
will show the extent and importance of Mr. Hale's 
law practice, and that he had every prospect of a 
great legal career. 

Mr. Hale exhibited an early bias towards poli- 
tics and the consideration of public affairs. With 
his ardent nature, popular sympathies, and devo- 
tion to free principles, it is not strange that he had 
embraced the doctrines of that democracy which 



JOHN P. HALE. 37 

was then in the ascendant in the young* republic. 
In 1832 he was elected to the legislature on a 
workingman's ticket, an incident thus early indica- 
tive of his sympathetic relation with humanity, and 
a presage of his future career as a champion of 
popular rights. He soon after became fully iden- 
tified with the Democratic party, and in 1834, 
when only twenty-eight years of age, he was ap- 
pointed by President Jackson United States dis- 
trict attorney, which position he held with distinc- 
tion till he was removed for political reasons by 
the Whig administration in 1841. During this 
time Mr. Hale had developed very rapidly as a 
lawyer and orator, and in 1843 he was nominated 
for congress by the Democratic party, and elected 
on a general ticket with Edmund Burke, John K. 
Reding, and Moses Morris. 

It was the fortune of Mr. Hale to come upon the 
stasre of action at a time of intellectual and moral 
ferment in New England, — a time of daring spec- 
ulations, when enthusiasms were aroused, and so- 
ciety, though not recreated by transcendentalism 
and other more or less Utopian schemes, yet re- 
ceived a mighty uplifting, which gave free scope 
to the most adventurous thought and philanthropy. 
His youth and early manhood were coincident with 
this period of moral and intellectual upheaval and 
awakening on all subjects ; and if such a man, by 
virtue of his environment and the indifference of 
the public sentiment in which he was reared, was 
as yet callous to the wrong and the danger of 
American slavery, it was clear he could not so 
remain. It is impossible to conceive that a mind 



38 .JOHN P. HALE. 

so comprehensive, a nature so fine and humane, a 
temper so bold, a courage so superb and complete, 
should not be arrested by a portent so terrible then 
rising into domination of the republic, and against 
which every generous aspiration of ~New England 
was rising in insurrection. Since, by his own con- 
fession, he had encouraged a rude interruption of 
an anti-slavery meeting in Dover in 1835, a perse- 
cution of abolitionists in which he said he thought 
he was doing God service, as Paul did before his 
conversion in persecuting the Christians, Mr. Hale 
had been a watchful observer of the course of 
events and ideas, and when he was elected to con- 
gress in 1843, it was known that he would vote for 
the abrogation of the twenty-first rule, whereby 
congress, at the dictation of the slave power, con- 
temptuously refused to receive anti-slavery peti- 
tions. He had avowed this purpose, and was 
elected with that understanding ; and when the 
question came forward in that congress, he, with 
Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, came to the support of 
Mr. Adams, and valiantly fought to abrogate the 
rule. The attempt was not then successful, but at 
the next session the "old man eloquent" burst 
through the gag rule in triumph. 

The slavery of the negro race in the United 
States is one of the crudest and bloodiest passages 
in human history. In the same year that the May- 
flower crossed the ocean, bearing to the western 
continent the Pilgrim fathers, another ship buffeted 
the same sea, brought with her a cargo of nineteen 
slaves, and landed them at Jamestown in Virginia. 
That was the fatal seed of American slavery, the 



JOHN P. HALE. 39 

upas tree which struck deep its poisonous root, and 
threatened so long to overshadow the whole land. 
Mr. Sumner well said that in the hold of these two 
ships were concealed the germs of the War of the 
Rebellion. As time passed on, negroes were forced 
into the country by British greed, and the system 
made its way into all the colonies. But the con- 
science of Puritanism never gave up its antagonism 
to the idea that "man could hold property in man," 
and in time the ]STew England colonies one by oue 
sloughed it oft*. 

During the War of Independence, however, 
nearly all the colonies held slaves, though the sys- 
tem was far stronger in the South than in the 
North. But the Revolutionary struggle itself 
gave rise to certain phrases since called " glittering 
generalities of natural right," which in themselves 
were held to bar a continuance of the institution. 
Before the adoption of the constitution a majority 
of the states had inhibited the further introduction 
of slaves, and almost everywhere, notably in Vir- 
ginia under the influence of Jefferson and Madison, 
the current of opinion and of political action was 
against slavery. That it was considered a mere 
temporary condition by our fathers, to be very 
soon eliminated and cast off, is beyond question. 
It was the fortune of Mr. Hale to demonstrate that 
on repeated occasions in his political life. The 
views of the makers of the constitution are clearly 
shown by the great ordinance of 1787, passed by 
the congress of the confederation, which dedicated 
the Northwest to freedom forever by these immor- 
tal words: "There shall be neither slavery nor 



40 JOHN P. HALE. 

involuntary servitude in the said territory, other- 
wise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the 
party shall have been duly convicted." 

Then came the constitution itself, in which the 
founders would acknowledge the existence of 
slavery in the Union by an euphemism only, by 
the prohibition of the slave trade after 1808, and 
by guaranties looking to the ultimate extinction of 
the system itself. One of the first acts of congress 
under the constitution was to reenact the ordinance 
of Jefferson and Dane by extending its provisions 
to new territory ceded to the Union. But now, 
soon after the constitution was formed, these strong- 
tendencies towards emancipation and the restriction 
of slavery began to be reversed. In the Union as 
first formed, only a small portion, a little strip on 
the southern Atlantic slope, was adapted to the 
tropical productions of rice and cotton. But now 
the Anglo-Saxon " hunger for the horizon " began 
to operate. The retrocession of Louisiana to France 
in 1800, and its purchase by the United States from 
Napoleon in 1803, and the purchase of Florida from 
Spain in 1819, threw open a vast acreage of new 
lands, with a deep and fertile soil, under a burning 
sun, fitted superbly for the growth of cotton and 
the sugar cane under conditions to which the Cau- 
casian constitution was not adapted. But the most 
potent factor was the simple invention of the cot- 
ton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793, which, concur- 
ring with other mechanical inventions of this time, 
changed the whole aspect of the slavery question 
in the cotton growing states. 

Previous to 1790 no cotton had been exported 



JOHN P. HALE. 41 

from America. These events stimulated the culti- 
vation of cotton, opened for it a foreign market, 
enhanced the commercial value of the slave, and 
tightened his chains. It is noteworthy how the 
excess of land in the extreme South fitted into the 
excess of labor in the border states, and gave to 
both a common and reciprocal interest in " the pe- 
culiar institution." The Louisiana purchase added 
more land to the Union than we already had. This 
acquisition of territory thus developed the inter- 
state slave trade, and Virginia became the breed- 
ing ground of a race of chattel laborers, whose 
wrongs were depicted in such lurid colors and witli 
such lightning strokes of genius in Uncle Tom's 
Cabin. Thus the institution became an iniquitous 
and guilty traffic, so far out-heroding any former 
system of helotism in human history as to call down 
upon itself the execration of man and the vengeance 
of heaven. The South became more and more 
enamored of a system so diabolically profitable, 
and, elated by holding the fancied monopoly of the 
world's greatest staple, boldly proclaimed that cot- 
ton was king, — that cotton could only be produced 
by slave labor, and that therefore slavery should be 
a permanent institution, to be nursed, protected, 
preserved, extended, and made the corner stone 
and vital principle of their civilization. From that 
time the North and South grew wider and wider 
apart, and the rival systems of freedom and slavery 
contended fiercely for the mastery in the great 
masses of territory that had been successively 
added to the Union. Happily, the great ordinance 
of 1787, a state paper deserving to take rank with 



42 JOHN F. HALE. 

the Declaration of Independence, which Lord 
Brougham said should always hang in the cab- 
inet of kings, had predestined to freedom a vast 
region, a virgin soil where no prior rights had 
taken root and no tares been sown, and to its effi- 
cacy we are indebted for the great free common- 
wealths of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wis- 
consin, and Minnesota, stretching from the Ohio to 
the sources of the Mississippi, — though slavery did 
not give them up even without a further struggle. 
The South, with a bad faith which became charac- 
teristic, demanded the abrogation of the ordinance, 
and an agitation began to be manifested whose 
dull and distant rumblings, forerunners of volcanic 
outbreaks, could be heard ever and anon during 
the next thirty years. But, over the Louisiana 
purchase of 1803, that vast region extending from 
the Gulf of Mexico to 'the headwaters of the Miss- 
ouri, the old empires of Spain and France had 
legalized slavery, and consequently the institution 
was already planted there beyond dispute. Louisi- 
ana and Arkansas were taken into the Union as 
slave states, but at a little later day, when Missouri 
applied for admission in 1818, the friends of free- 
dom, then in control of the house of representa- 
tives, demanded the exclusion of slavery. There- 
upon ensued a memorable struggle lasting two 
years, but finally settled by the Missouri compro- 
mise passed in 1820, whereby Missouri was admit- 
ted with the slavery that has cursed and hampered 
her ever since, and the jSorth in lieu of it got the 
solemn agreement of the South for the reversion of 
freedom in the part of the territory not yet organ- 



JOHN P. HALE. 43 

ized, in the following words : "And be it further 
enacted, that in all that territory ceded by France 
to the United States under the name of Louisiana, 
which lies north of 36° 30' north latitude, excepting 
only such part thereof as is included within the 
limits of the state contemplated by this act, slavery 
and involuntary servitude, otherwise than in pun- 
ishment of crime whereof the party shall have been 
duly convicted, shall be and is forever prohibited." 
Florida was then admitted in 1821, and once more 
the country breathed freely, and peace for the 
future was supposed to be secure. But the tiger 
craving of the South for conquest and power had 
been whetted, and its aggressive and Philistine 
character appeared ever and anon, in the discus- 
sions upon the tariff, the public lands, the right of 
petition, the right of interference with the mails in 
search of " incendiary publications," the Creek and 
Seminole War, and otherwise, that came up in the 
following twenty years. That at the end slavery 
had made a distinct advance upon freedom, enlarg- 
ing its pretensions, aggrandizing itself anew at 
every step, and more and more completely subju- 
gating the public opinion of the North to its uses, 
is a truth abundantly evidenced by the history of 
the time. In 1832 Mr. Calhoun had organized the 
slave power, and brought it forward upon the scene 
with a distinct purpose and programme of its own ; 
and, less than twenty-five years after the Missouri 
compromise, that poAver, now become a propaganda 
of the most ruthless character, and, holding entire 
control of the federal government, had adroitly and 
criminally plotted and brought about the severance 



44 JOHN P. HALE. 

of Texas from Mexico, overrun and revolutionized 
it, and now proposed to annex it to the slave inter- 
est in the Union, and make its preponderance final 
and decisive. This had been notoriously done in 
the interest of slave extension. These encroach- 
ments of the South upon freedom were well calcu- 
lated to arouse the latent and slowly-growing anti- 
slavery sentiments of the Xorth, and, in fact, 
brought a crisis which enlisted the energies of 
many noble souls. 

At this juncture John P. Hale took his seat in 
the national house of representatives — into this 
seething caldron of slavery agitation his political 
life was cast. He had inherited no anti-slavery 
principles — such as he had were the fruit of a 
steady growth of heart and brain. He had been 
awakened by the trend of events and ideas between 
the Storrs meeting in the Dover church and 184:3, 
and he found his conscience and his whole better 
nature insurgent against the slave system. Per- 
haps no man ever entered congress with more 
flattering prospects. His reputation had preceded 
him, and his gifts as an orator gave him an imme- 
diate hearing in the house. In the opening days 
of the session he entered freely into the debates, 
taking a very prominent stand as an advocate of 
Democratic principles, and attracting wide and 
admiring attention by his oratorical power. There 
was the fire of a passionate sincerity in his eloquent 
improvisations ; and I well remember the contem- 
porary characterizations of him as the " Democratic 
Boanerges," the " Granite State cataract," and 
other like expressions. He proposed measures of 



JOHN P. HALE. 45 

retrenchment in regard to West Point, the army, 
and the navy, and advocated a reduction in postage 
rates, and the abolition of corporal punishment in 
the army. On the 3d of June, 1844, he set in 
motion a great movement for humanity by moving 
an amendment to the naval appropriation bill, abol- 
ishing flogging in the navy, and his eloquence 
carried it in the house, but it was lost in the senate. 
Then came the act of Mr. Hale which may fairly 
be regarded as the initial point of his great career 
upon those lines which he afterwards followed with 
such devoted singleness of heart and purpose. The 
annexation of Texas was the pet scheme of Presi- 
dent Tyler, but was supported zealously by the 
extreme pro-slavery party at the South with Mr. 
Calhoun at their head. He was their leading intel- 
lect, and it was soon seen to be a scheme in the 
direct and exclusive interest of slavery extension. 
Accordingly, as its character unfolded, the sponta- 
neous feeling and expression of the North were 
opposed to it. The project of slavery extension 
was opposed by all the accredited organs of Demo- 
cratic party opinion in New Hampshire, alike by 
the leaders, the press, and the masses of the party 
itself. It was denounced by the press in unmeas- 
ured terms as a design " black as ink and bitter as 
hell." This was the undoubted attitude of the 
Democratic party of New Hampshire in 1843 and 
1844. But the South had obtained complete con- 
trol of the national councils and patronage, and the 
word had gone forth that Texas was to be annexed 
to the Union for the aggrandizement of slavery? 
and such was the power of the South over the 



4t'» JOHN P. HALE. 

national convention that Mr. Van Buren, for whom 
the Democracy of New Hampshire had unanimously 
instructed their delegates, was defrauded of the 
presidential nomination on account of his opposi- 
tion to the annexation of Texas, and Mr. Polk 
nominated because he favored the scheme. There- 
fore, to keep in line with, or rather to obey the 
behests of, the Southern Democracy, the Democratic 
newspapers and public men of New Hampshire 
had to change front, and to eat their own brave 
words of resistance to that domination. In fact, 
the annexation of Texas had been first hinted at, 
then timidly suggested, and at length boldly 
avowed as the Democratic policy in the teeth of all 
the anti-slavery feeling of the Northern states ; 
and not only this, but as a treaty of annexation, 
which the whole North believed to be the only con- 
stitutional way of acquiring foreign territory, could 
not be carried through the senate, it was resolved 
by an unscrupulous and domineering slave party to 
defy all constitutional restraints, and annex Texas 
by joint resolution. So complete was the domina- 
tion of Southern men and interests over the Demo- 
cratic party of the North that at their dictation the 
New Hampshire Democracy reversed its course, 
and the legislature in December, 1844, passed reso- 
lutions instructing the senators and representatives 
in congress to vote for the annexation of Texas. 
It was true that Mr. Hale had powerfully and effec- 
tively advocated the election of Mr. Polk, who was 
known to be in favor of annexation, but he had done 
so, undoubtedly, with the understanding that 
annexation was to be effected, if at all, by constitu- 



JOHN P. HALE. 47 

tional methods, by the treaty-making power which 
all the great organs of constitutional interpretation 
had insisted upon, and also that as many or more 
free than slave states were to be added to the 
Union, and thus the area of freedom was to be 
extended at least equally with that of slavery. 
This was the language of Northern speakers, and 
the Democratic press, headed by the Democratic 
Review, all through the campaign. This was Mr. 
Clay's opinion, and some Southern men opposed 
the annexation upon the very ground " that Texas 
as an undivided slave country, though a foreign 
one, was preferable to Texas carved up into an 
equal number of slaveholding and non-slave- 
holding states." The New Hampshire legislature 
in these very resolutions of instruction expressed 
the belief that the annexation of Texas would add 
more free than slave states to the Union. But 
Mr. Polk had been elected, and the South pro- 
ceeded at once to pluck the spoils of victory. 
Before the inauguration so eager were they for the 
consummation of the scheme that at the session 
commencing in December, 1844, the Texas project 
was brought forward. All the pent-up fires of 
Northern opposition to slavery extension and 
aooTandizement were fanned into a flame, and a 
tierce contention arose. Mr. Hale, evidently with 
no idea of breaking with his party, instead of bend- 
ing to the dictation of the Southern leaders, pro- 
ceeded simply to carry out the opinions he was 
known to entertain, which he had avowed in New 
Hampshire, which he had expressed by his action 
in vindication of the right of petition, and in which 



48 JOHN P. HALE. 

he had every reason to suppose he would be sus- 
tained by his Democratic constituents at home. He 
accordingly moved a suspension of the rules in 
order to move to divide Texas into two parts, in 
one of which slavery should be forever prohibited ; 
but though his motion was carried by a majority, 
it failed for want of a two-thirds vote. This, and 
the scornful defeat of every movement looking to a 
division of Texas between freedom and slavery, 
showed only too clearly the animus of the whole 
scheme. In fact, if Texas, or any part of it, had 
been let in with a constitution prohibiting slavery, 
subsequent proceedings would have interested its 
advocates no more. 

Mr. Hale then addressed to his constituents, " the 
Democratic Republican electors of JSTew Hamp- 
shire," the famous letter dated July 7, 1845, in 
which he took ground against the Texas scheme, 
exposing its character in no measured terms, as 
purely in the interest of slave extension. He 
declared his unalterable opposition to the annexa- 
tion by congress of a foreign nation for the avowed 
purpose of extending and perpetuating slavery. 
He stigmatized the reasons given by its advocates 
in its behalf as " eminently calculated to provoke 
the scorn of earth and the judgment of heaven," 
and thus appealed to the patriotic traditions of one 
of the most patriotic of the " old thirteen": — "When 
our forefathers bade a last farewell to the homes of 
their childhood, the graves of their fathers, and the 
temples of their God, and ventured upon all the 
desperate contingencies of wintry seas and a sav- 
age coast, that they might in strong faith and 



JOHN P. HALE. 49 

ardent hope lay deep the foundations of the temple 
of liberty, their faith would have become scepticism, 
and their hope despair, could they have foreseen 
that the day would ever arrive when their degener- 
ate sons should be found seeking to extend their 
boundaries and their government, not for the pur- 
pose of promoting freedom, but sustaining slavery." 
This letter for a moment gave pause to political 
movements in New Hampshire, but was very soon 
met by a storm of denunciation from the party 
leaders. The decree went forth that Mr. Hale was 
to be thrown overboard for his contumacy, and at 
a convention of the party called for the purpose 
February 12, 1845, his nomination was rescinded, 
his name struck from the ticket, and another sub- 
stituted. But there was a public conscience that 
only needed to be aroused, and the letter had struck 
a chord that was only waiting to be touched by the 
hand of a master. Immediately there were signs 
of a revolt in the Democratic party against this 
despotic sway at the dictation of the slave power, 
and under the lead of Amos Tuck and John L. 
Hayes a small party styling themselves Independ- 
ent Democrats rallied about the standard of Mr. 
Hale. This was the first meeting in a state where 
the party rule was absolute — which had been under 
Democratic control since 1829, and had given Mr. 
Polk 6,000 majority. Meanwhile, although faithful 
sentinels on the watch towers of freedom fore- 
warned the North of the direful consequences of 
annexation, it was carried in the house by 134 to 
77, showing the gains slavery had made, John P. 
Hale and Hannibal Hamlin alone among the North- 



50 JOHN P. HALE. 

era Democracy refusing to bow the knee at the 
party behest. Thus the administration of Mr. 
Tyler, not otherwise illustrious, was distinguished 
at last by the admission of Texas. The election 
came off March 11, l&lo. Mr. Hale received about 
8,000 votes, and the regular Democratic candidate 
lacked about 1,000 votes of an election. Mr. Hale 
had taken no very active part in it. He had not 
been hopeful of a successful resistance to the party 
despotism, and had made arrangements to retire 
from political life, and take up the practice of his 
profession in the city of ]STew York. Many years 
afterward he said in the senate, — " When I went 
home from Washington at the close of the session 
in 1845, I had no more idea of being returned to 
congress than I had of succeeding to the vacant 
throne of China." Moreover, in his letter to his 
constituents, he had rather incautiously said : " If 
you think differently from me on this subject, and 
should therefore deem it expedient to select another 
person to effectuate your purpose in congress, no 
person in the state will bow more submissively to 
your will than myself." With a perhaps over- 
scrupulous sense of honor, he regarded this as a 
sort of pledge to leave the result with them with- 
out interference. But the result of the first trial 
convinced him that New Hampshire was not yet 
irrevocably mortgaged to the slave propaganda, 
nor wholly prepared to execute the edicts of party 
tyranny. His friends gathered around him, and 
demanded that he take the field in person. Their 
summons to him was the appeal of the Andalusian 
king to the ancient Douglas : 



JOHN P. HALE. 51 

" Take thou the leading of the van, 
And charge the Moors amain ; 
There is not such a lance as thine 
In all the hosts of Spain." 

Mr. Hale yielded to these importunities rather 
than to any ambitious views or hopes of his own. 
He assumed the leadership ; he canvassed the state ; 
he delivered speeches wherever he could get a 
hearing, to audiences large and small, in halls, in 
churches, in vestries, in school-rooms, in the open 
air, everywhere stirring and thrilling the people 
with his warm and glowing eloquence, and his 
impassioned appeals to duty and manliness. He 
was then in his full prime. His figure was noble 
and commanding — 

"A combination and a form indeed, 
Where every god did seem to set his seal, 
To give the world assurance of a man." 

His voice was resonant and flexible ; his counte- 
nance was one of striking manly beauty ; he had 
perfect command of words, and perfect command 
of his temper ; his self-control, his chivalrous cour- 
tesy, were superb ; his sincerity and loyalty to his 
convictions were manifest, and it required a crisis 
like this, the liberties of man hanging in the bal- 
ance, to give full sweep to his unrivalled powers, 
his wit, his humor, his brilliant repartee, and bring 
into play all the resources of his large mind, his 
humane spirit, his liberty-loving heart. The cir- 
cumstances had never had a parallel. Here was a 
man who was voluntarily putting to hazard the 



52 JOHN P. HALE. 

highest hopes and brightest prospects — renouncing 
all by a sublime act of political abnegation and self- 
effacement — making way for liberty like Arnold 
"Von Winkelreid charging the Austrian army ; 
giving up a party whose ascendency in his own 
state was so pronounced as to be beyond question, 
whose particular pride and pet he was, and by 
whose generous suffrages he had been set forward 
in a career of political advancement whose goal he 
might without unwarranted pretension easily see in 
the highest honor of the world. As far as human 
forecast could reach, this course opened to him no 
road to favor or patronage. As no man could be 
so visionary as to indulge a hope of breaking the 
spell of Democratic victory in New Hampshire, 
adherence to his party connection and obedience 
to party direction were unquestionably the readiest 
and only path to influence and promotion. Con- 
curring with this was Mr. Hale's natural fondness 
for popular applause and for political life, his al- 
leged ambition, and his growing popularity as an 
orator and statesman. But all were renounced. 
He hazarded wealth, power, political preferment, 
and held out no lure to his followers but the cold 
and hunger which Garibaldi promised to those who 
should strike with him for the deliverance of Italy. 
In his own words, he sat on no stool of repentance. 
He maintained the defiant attitude he had taken 
up, and defended his position before the people 
with imperturbable wit, with infinite good humor, 
and incomparable eloquence. In this extraordinary 
crusade of Mr. Hale there was a certain romantic 
knight-errantry, which, with the charm of his per- 



\ 



JOHN P. HALE. 53 

sonality, his gallant and chivalrous bearing, his 
noble heart, his freedom from all vindictiveness as 
from every selfish ambition, captivated the imagina- 
tion of the people, and made him an ideal popular 
hero. Brave men flocked to his standard, and 
gladly bared their own bosoms to the shafts of the 
pro-slavery hatred aimed at him. He was a popu- 
lar idol, and made of political coadjutors devoted 
personal friends. They lived in his "mild and 
magnificent eye," and loved to follow wherever his 
white plume danced in the eddies of the fight. 
They were his disciples, and asked nothing better 
than the title of " Hale men," thus identifying 
themselves with this eloquent champion of liberty 
sans peur et sans reproche. I shall never forget 
how a noble old man once told me that in those 
days no night ever passed when he and his wife 
did not together send up their prayers that God 
would bless, and protect, and keep John P. Hale. 
And not alone were their aspirations wafted heaven- 
ward for his welfare ; but thousands in New Hamp- 
shire, and everywhere in America where human 
hearts were beginning to stir with new thoughts of 
freedom, sent up daily their petitions to the Most 
High to cover his head in battle, and shelter him 
under the shadow of His wing. The " Hale storm" 
of 1845 is the heroic and romantic episode of our 
political history, and veterans who lived in and 
have survived that time turn back to the period 
fondly as one when it was worth while to live. 
Thus the conflict went on through the summer 
days, and 

"His was the voice that rang 
In the fight like a bugle-call." 



54 JOHN P. HALE. 

Perhaps its most striking incident was the cele- 
brated meeting of Mr. Hale and Franklin Pierce at 
the Old North church in Concord on the 9th of 
June, 1845. The circumstances were suited to 
exhibit Mr. Hale's extraordinary powers, and they 
were displayed to the greatest advantage. During 
that week, the legislature commenced its session. A 
meeting of Independent Democrats, to be addressed 
by Mr. Hale, had been called, and there was an 
nnnsnal assemblage of people in town in attendance 
upon various religious and benevolent anniversaries. 
The Democrats, apprehensive of the effect of such 
a speech upon an audience so intelligent and con- 
scientious, resolved that he must be answered on the 
spot, and Franklin Pierce was selected as the only 
man at all fitted for such an encounter. The old 
church was crowded beyond its capacity. Mr. Hale 
spoke for two hours, making a calm, dignified, and 
effective vindication of his principles and conduct. 
Occasionally rudely interrupted, he never lost his 
temper, nor that splendid equanimity which availed 
him on so many occasions in debate. He rose to a 
surprising eloquence in denunciation of slavery, and 
at the end it was manifest that, whether they agreed 
with his conclusions or not, all were convinced that 
he had been actuated by pure motives and a high 
sense of public duty. 

Mr. Pierce was himself a nervous, energetic, and 
brilliant orator; but, for the task set before him, he 
was handicapped by the inconsistencies of the Dem- 
ocratic record, and by Mr. Hale's glowing appeal to 
the nobler sentiments of humanity, lifting the plane 
of discussion entirely above its ordinary dead level. 



JOHN P. HALE. 55 

He replied to Mr. Hale in a passionate and impe- 
rious, not to say insolent, manner, accusing him of 
ambitious motives, and defending-, as he only could, 
the party in power for its efforts to extend the area 
of the republic by bringing the vast territory of 
Texas under its sway. The advantage in temper 
was very manifest, and when Mr. Hale had rejoined 
with a triumphant vindication of his own motives 
and purposes, he closed with this magnificent appeal : 
"I expected to be called ambitious; to have my 
name cast out as evil. I have not been disappoint- 
ed. But, if things have come to this condition, that 
conscience and a sacred regard for truth and duty 
are to be publicly held up to ridicule, and scouted at 
without rebuke, as has just been done here, it mat- 
ters little whether we are annexed to Texas or 
Texas is annexed to us. I may be permitted to 
say that the measure of my ambition will be full, if, 
when my earthly career shall be finished and my 
bones be laid beneath the soil of New Hampshire, 
when my wife and children shall repair to my grave 
to drop the tear of affection to my memory, they may 
read on my tombstone, ' He who lies beneath sur- 
rendered office, place, and power, rather than bow 
down and worship slavery.' ' In the opinion of 
Mr. Hale's friends, his victory was indisputable. No 
debate in New Hampshire ever had such interest, 
and none results at all comparable with it in import- 
ance. Beyond doubt Mr. Pierce's effort that day 
made him president of the United States, and Mr. 
Hale's led to the triumph of his party, whereby he 
became the first anti-slavery senator and the recog- 
nized pioneer champion of the Free-Soil movement. 



56 JOHN P. HALE. 

On the 23d of September, 1845, the third trial was 
held for representative in congress, resulting in a 
Democratic defeat by about the same vote as be- 
fore, the Hale men holding the balance of power 
between them and the Whigs. November 29, 1845, 
a fourth trial left the Democrats in a still more deci- 
sive minority; and then the final struggle for mas- 
tery in the state was postponed to the annual elec- 
tion, March 10, 1846. During the winter, Mr. Hale 
canvassed the state again, everywhere the admired 
champion of a cause now manifestly advancing to 
certain triumph. The result was a complete over- 
throw of the party in power in New Hampshire, the 
Whigs and Independent Democrats together hav- 
ing both branches of the legislature, and a consid- 
erable majority of the popular vote, though there 
was no election of governor or congressman by the 
people. Mr. Hale was chosen a representative from 
Dover, and, by a coalition of Hale men and Whigs, 
was made speaker of the house. Mr. Colby, the 
Whig candidate, was elected governor, and, on the 
9th of June, 1846, Mr. Hale was chosen United 
States senator for the full term of six years com- 
mencing March 4, 1847. Thus, upon an issue dis- 
tinctly joined, the Democracy had been signally 
defeated, and the Gibraltar of the North had passed 
into the hands of the combined opposition. The 
first and strongest outwork had been carried in a 
square contest against the extension of a system 
which met the moral reprobation of the world, and 
the victory proclaimed that never again was New 
Hampshire to sit supinely by, to take the orders 
and register the edicts of slavery. The note of defi- 



JOHN P. HALE. 57 

ance and of resistance to further slavery aggression 
rang out clear and strong from these New Hamp- 
shire hills, and was heard throughout America. 
No ear so dull that did not hear it; no brain so 
sluggish that did not comprehend it. As armies 
in mythologic story paused in mid-contest to watch 
the issue of a single combat, so in some sense the 
people of America turned to observe the outcome 
of this struggle; and Mr. Hale's success in New 
Hampshire in resistance to slavery, and to party 
subserviency and tyranny, was the first lightning 
gleam of victory lighting up the dark clouds that 
hung over the country. It was an encouragement 
and a challenge to other states and the friends of 
liberty elsewhere. An inspired singer and prophet 
of anti-slavery had watched the struggle with 
breathless interest from his home just across our 
border, and it called out from him that immortal 
tribute to New Hampshire, which will live with her 
fame and the name of John G. Whittier forever: 

" God bless New Hampshire — from her granite peaks 
Once more the voice of Stark and Langdon speaks. 
The long bound vassal of the exulting South 
For very shame her self-forged chain has broken, — 
Torn the black seal of slavery from her mouth. 
And in the clear tones of her old time spoken ! 
Oh, all undreamed of, all unhoped for changes ! 
The tyrant's ally proves his sternest foe ; 
To all his biddings, from her mountain ranges, 
New Hampshire thunders an indignant No ! 
Who is it now despairs ? Oh ! faint of heart, 
Look upward to those Northern mountains cold, 
Flouted by Freedom's victor-flag unrolled, 
And gather strength to bear a manlier part ! 
All is not lost. The Angel of God's blessing 



58 JOHN P. HALE. 

Encamps with Freedom on the field of fight ; 
Still to her banner, day by day, are pressing 
Unlooked for allies, striking for the right ! 
Courage, then, Northern hearts ! — Be firm, be true : 
AVhat one brave state hath done, can ye not also do ?" 

Here were the first fruits of John P. Hale's man- 
ly resistance to slavery in America. At first but a 
feeble protest, scarcely heard amid the hosannas of 
Northern servility to the slave power, it had swelled 
into a volume of indignant opposition, which had 
swept away the strongest muniments of oppression 
in the North. It gave courage everywhere for the 
great struggle just opening before this people. In 
the words of Cardinal Newman, " We did but light 
a beacon fire on the summit of a lonely hill; and 
anon we were amazed to find the firmament on 
every side red with the light of a responsive flame. n 

And now, is there occasion for. either hesitation 
or apology in making claim in behalf of John P. 
Hale for pioneership in the great Free-soil move- 
ment which finally overthrew slavery in the United 
States? New Hampshire was the first battle-field 
of the new crusade, and John P. Hale commanded 
the vanguard. Aye, more, in his Texas letter he 
had formulated the issues upon which the fight was 
to be made and won, the identical postulates which 
were afterwards to be the principles of a great polit- 
ical party not yet born, under whose lead the war 
was to be fought and emancipation come to the 
country and the slave. The Hon. Amos Tuck, one 
of the earliest, ablest, and most faithful of the fol- 
lowers of Mr. Hale, at Downer Landing in 1878 r 
met the claim of Massachusetts that the Republi- 



JOHN P. HALE. 59 

can party was founded there in 18-48, by showing 
that that party was anticipated in every one of its 
ideas by the Hale party in !New Hampshire in 
184o, and that John P. Hale won his election as 
the first anti-slavery senator, and sat in that body, 
alone, as such, for two years before a friendly 
senator came to join him, and two years before the 
date which Massachusetts claims for her patent. 
This claim for 'New Hampshire and for Mr. Hale is 
impregnable. Therefore I say that no man can pre- 
cede Mr. Hale as the founder of the Republican 
party, and all that is implied thereby: and that 
whatever of merit may attach to such a sponsor- 
ship — and I know full well that many still regard it 
as a cause for condemnation rather than praise — 
that whatever of glory or shame there be in it, be- 
longs to him more than to any other man. I must 
ask indulgence for the use of political terminology r 
which I employ because I find our resources of ex- 
pression inadequate to convey any clear ideas with- 
out using the terms Democrat and Republican. 

Mr. Hale took his seat in the senate, December 
6, 1847, and for the first time American slavery 
was confronted in his person by the aroused moral 
sense of the American people. From his first dra- 
matic appearance in that body this solitary repre- 
sentative of freedom was the object of the bitter 
hatred and disdain of the slave oligarchy. He en- 
tered a senate composed of thirty-two Democrats, 
twenty-one Whigs, and himself. Declining to be 
classified with either, he unfalteringly took up and 
held the position of an anti-slavery independent. 
He declined the obscurity to which both sides would 



60 JOHN P. HALE. 

have relegated him, and for two years before he 
was joined by Chase in 1849, the anti-slavery move- 
ment centred around his striking personality, and 
he stood there alone, resisting at every step the ag- 
gressive measures of slavery, maintaining his ground 
with unsurpassed resources of wit and logic, elo- 
quence and good humor. He entered resolutely 
into the public business and had to stand in the 
breach and contend single-handed with the entire 
senate, containing then not only the great triumvi- 
rate of oratory and statesmanship, but also many 
others of the highest distinction and ability. He 
met them face to face, and dealt sturdy blows for 
freedom in every emergency. His weapons were 
of that firm edge and fine temper that might be 
broken, but would not turn, in their impact upon 
the brazen front of oppression. Every means of 
silencing him was resorted to, threats, insults, sneers, 
ridicule, derision. He was treated with studied 
contempt by the South, and with cold neglect by 
the JSTorth. He was denied the common courtesy 
of a place on senatorial committees, being told pub- 
licly by a senator who was afterward expelled from 
the body for disloyalty, that he was considered out- 
side of any healthy political organization in the 
country. But this discipline was lost on him. He 
had the moral courage which shrinks from no duty — 
that calm, firm, cool, inflexible, resolution which 
clinched its determination to go straightforward 
with Luther's exclamation, " I will repair thither 
though I should find there as many devils as there 
are tiles on the house tops. I cannot do otherwise, 
God helping me." It is not practicable to refer 



JOHN P. HALE. 61 

minutely to the debates in which Mr. Hale mingled 
in the senate. In 1848, in the discussion upon the 
admission of Oregon, he proposed as an amendment 
the ordinance of 1787 excluding slavery, which 
gave rise to a fierce debate, in the course of which 
he was the subject of most personal and inflamma- 
tory denunciations. He defended himself with con- 
summate ability, declaring his determination to 
press the prohibition of slavery according to his 
own judgment. Said he, " I am willing to place 
myself upon the great principle of human right, to 
stand where the word of God and my own con- 
science concur in placing me, and then bid defiance 
to all consequences." Early in April, 1848, upon 
resolutions of sympathy with the up-risings of the 
down-trodden nationalities of Europe, Mr. Hale 
spoke in the senate in a strain of sadness mingled 
with enthusiasm and a lofty hope for the disenthrall- 
ment of all men, in America and Europe alike. 

In a debate occasioned by certain mob demon- 
strations against the office of the National Era in 
Washington, Mr. Hale introduced a resolution cop- 
ied from the laws of Maryland, providing for the 
reimbursement of persons whose property should 
be destroyed by riotous assemblages. This led to 
a controversy with Mr. Calhoun, in which the great 
Southerner forgot his usual urbanity and became 
violently personal, and ended his speech by saying, 
that he " would as soon argue with a maniac from 
Bedlam as with the senator from ~New Hampshire 
on this subject." Mr. Hale retorted by telling Mr. 
Calhoun that it was a novel mode of terminating a 
controversy by charitably throwing the mantle of a 



62 JOHN P. HALE. 



maniac's irresponsibility upon one's antagonist. In 
this debate, Mr. Foote of Mississippi, after many 
insulting expressions, and denouncing Mr. Hale's 
bill as " obviously intended to cover and protect 
negro stealing," turned to Mr. Hale and said: "I 
invite him to visit the good state of Mississippi, in 
which I have the honor to reside, and will tell him 
beforehand in all honesty, that he could not go ten 
miles into the interior before he would grace one of 
the tallest trees of the forest with a rope around 
his neck, with the approbation of every virtuous 
and patriotic citizen; and that, if necessary, I should 
myself assist in the operation." Mr. Hale replied: 
" The senator invites me to visit the state of Missis- 
sippi, and kindly informs me that he would be one 
of those who would act the assassin, and put an end 
to my career * * * Well, in return for his hospit- 
able invitation, I can only express the desire that 
he should penetrate into one of the ' dark cor- 
ners ' of New Hampshire, and, if he do, I am much 
mistaken if he would not find that the people in 
that ' benighted region ' would be very happy to lis- 
ten to his arguments, and engage in an intellectual 
conflict with him, in which the truth might be elic- 
ited." The ruffianism of the assault, and the noble- 
ness of the reply, have consigned Senator Foote, 
though a brilliant and by no means a bad man, to 
the pillory of history, with a soubriquet given him 
by the public instinct which will last forever. 

He opposed the whole system of measures pur- 
sued in prosecuting the war with Mexico, because, 
in the language of Mr. Webster himself, it was " an 
iniquitous war made in order to obtain, by conquest, 



JOHN P. HALE. 63 

slave territory." In December, 1849, Mr. Hale 
again proposed to incorporate the ordinance of 1787 
into Mr. Foote's resolution, declaring it to be the 
duty of congress to provide territorial governments 
for California, Deseret, and JSTew Mexico. 

At a later day the compromise measures of 1850, 
including the fugitive slave law, which he loathed 
and defied, were fought by him with all the weap- 
ons of his logic, wit, ridicule, and sarcasm, and with 
all his parliamentary resources. He occupied two 
days in an elaborate argument, vindicating the 
principles, measures, and acts of anti-slavery men. 

This was, perhaps, the most powerful of his sena- 
torial efforts. In it he grappled resolutely with 
the morality, the statesmanship, and the policy, of 
Mr. "Webster's 7th of March speech, quoting his 
former declarations against himself, agreeing with 
Mr. Webster in 1848, but dissenting from him in 
1850, and saying: u Yet the senator says he 
would not reenact the laws of God. Well, sir, I 
would. When he tells me that the law of God is 
against slavery, it is a most potent argument for 
our incorporating it with any territorial bill " He 
closed with an eloquent presentation of the princi- 
ples and aims of the Free-Soil party, of which he 
was the foremost champion. 

The abolition of Hogging in the navy was a con- 
genial field for the exertion of his humane spirit. 
In the senate he promptly renewed the efforts he 
had commenced in the house. In July, 1848, he mov- 
ed to insert in the naval appropriation bill a clause 
abolishing the spirit ration and prohibiting corporal 
punishment in the navy. He addressed the senate 



64 JOHN P. HALE. 

in its favor, but only four senators rose with him. 
In February, 1849, he again presented petitions, 
and made a strong* speech, in which he depicted in 
glowing colors the brutality, degradation, and out- 
rage of punishment with the eat-o'-nine-tails, but 
was voted down by 32 to 17. In September, 1850, 
he made a final impassioned appeal to the senate to 
stand no longer in the way of the abolition of flog- 
ging in the navy, and on the same day it was car- 
ried as a part of the appropriation bill by a vote of 
26 to 24, and was concurred in by the house. Thus 
at last his efforts were crowned with success. It 
was a joyful day for the American navy and for 
humanity. It was one of the most gratifying inci- 
dents of his life when, two years after, he was re- 
ceived by Commodore Nicholson and crew onboard 
the man-of-war Grevmantown in Boston harbor, who 
thanked him for his noble efforts in abolishing: flos- 
ging in the United States navy, presented him 
with a medal, and manned the yards in his honor. 
It was not till twelve years after, however, that he 
secured the abolition of the spirit ration. His 
agency in these beneficent reforms is one of his 
chiefest titles to honor, and is most fittingly com- 
memorated on the pedestal of this statue. 

Thus upon every question that arose he sustained 
his part with a manliness, a courage, and a nobility of 
soul which extorted the admiration of foes as well 
as friends. To adapt the language of Junius, " The 
rays of Southern indignation collected upon him 
served only to illumine, they could not consume." 
The estimate placed upon his services and character 
was manifested by his unanimous nomination for 



JOHN P. HALE. 65 

the presidency by the Liberty party at Buffalo in 
1847. He magnanimously relinquished this candi- 
dacy, and submitted himself to the will of the later 
Free-Soil convention at Buffalo in 1848, thus mak- 
ing way for Mr. Van Buren, who was there nom- 
inated over him by a majority of 40 votes. Mr. 
Hale afterwards said that if he had had any idea 
that the Barnburners had in mind only to revenge 
Mr. Van Buren's wrongs upon Gen. Cass in 1848, 
he would have lost his right hand before he would 
have been a party to such a fraud. In August, 
1852, the Free-Soil party at Pittsburg nominated 
Mr. Hale as its candidate for president, and under 
the banner of Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, 
Free Men, 'No More Slave States, and no Slave Ter- 
ritories, he received at the election 155,850 votes. 

His first term in the senate is the period of focal 
interest in Mr. Hale's career. He was the gallant 
leader of a forlorn hope. He was the avant courier 
of a new regime. In him were concentrated in germ 
all the forces of the new era. Every attempt to 
suppress him proved unavailing. He stubbornly 
contested every inch of ground. He stood up and 
battled unfalteringly for his principles against all 
threats, all intimidations, all allurements. And yet 
he steered clear of all the breakers and shoals in 
such a dangerous course. His tact and disposition 
alike kept him always within the proprieties of de- 
bate. The enemies who hated him watched in vain 
for some word, some purpose disloyal to the Union 
which they affected to champion, but were foiled by 
the absence of all vindictive feeling or speech, and 
by a marvellous moderation and self-restraint in 



66 JOHN P. HALE. 

the face of provocation. Ignored, socially tabooed, 
insulted, he showed no resentment. Assailed ran- 
corously on all sides, he replied with good-natured 
vehemence, but a never-failing courtesy. Occasion- 
ally, however, he carried the war into Africa, and 
transfixed the slave power with the keen arrows of 
satire and invective. He gave the giant wrong no 
rest and no quarter. He charged its defenders 
in front and flank and rear, and, returning again 
and again to the combat, while his assaults were 
redoubled, he at length secured a comparative im- 
munity from personal attack. Thus his position 
lifted him into a grand and superb isolation; and 
now that we stand on the vantage ground which 
he won for us, we are able in some degree to enter 
into that high companionship, and into the elevation 
of spirit that sustained him in his self-appointed 
role of austere political solitude. As has been said 
of General Gordon " we know to-day that he alone 
was awake in a world of dreamers." 

Thus for two years one great heroic figure was 
prominently before the eyes of America. Solitary 
and alone, he represented in the senate the dawn- 
ing hope of freedom. But may we not be sure 
that he already heard behind him, in imagination, 



the on-coming hosts of the new era, closing their 
ranks and advancing to the last onset against slav- 
ery, which should sweep away the embattled pha- 
lanxes of oppression? Did he not have something 
of the fine instinct of that Scottish girl, who, laying 
her ear to the ground, exclaimed, Avith streaming 
eyes and transfigured face, " Dinna ye hear the slo- 
gan? It's the Campbells a comin'!" So, again, on 



JOHN P. HALE. 67 

a larger battlefield than Lueknow, where greater 
issues hung in the balance, " the Campbells were 
a-comin'," and it was given to this inspired prophet 
of anti-slavery to cheer up the beleaguered garri- 
son of freedom, to make one more struggle and hold 
out for the victory. The Campbells came — Chase 
and Seward and Sumner were their vanguard — a 
glorious reenforcement, and from that moment the 
forces of liberty were to grow and grow, till the 
exasperated enemy should compass its own destruc- 
tion by raising its hand against that very Union 
whose sacredness had been for seventy years invok- 
ed in its defence. 

One can but wish for a more elaborate treatment 
than is here permitted of Mr. Hale's senatorial la- 
bors, and to reproduce some of the many thrilling 
appeals and noble sentiments which broke from his 
lips in the great discussions of his first term. But 
the student of the history of that exciting period, 
and the lover of eloquence, will be repaid by the 
perusal of those great debates, and will rise from 
them with an enhanced appreciation of the splen- 
did powers, no less than the grand earnestness and 
the priceless services to liberty, of John P. Hale. 

At the expiration of his first term his opponents 
were in control of New Hampshire, and chose his 
successor. Mr. Hale then proceeded to carry out 
a long cherished design to practise his profession 
in the city of New York, but was recalled in 1855 
to fill the senatorial vacancy occasioned by the 
death of Mr. Atherton. He served out that term, 
and was then reelected for a full term commencing 
in 1859. During these ten years of senatorial ser- 



68 JOHN P. HALE. 

vice his course was as straight as gravity. He 
stood undismayed and with unshaken constancy 
amid the surges of a fierce contention, and nothing 
deflected him for one moment from that line of 
conduct which he had marked out as the path of 
conscience and duty. In the long struggles of 
that momentous period Mr. Hale was found in the 
forefront of every debate where liberty was drawn 
in peril. His speeches on the various phases of 
the Kansas controversy, the Oregon question, the 
Dred Scott decision, on the constitutional status of 
slavery, on the province of the supreme court in 
the settlement of questions of law and political 
pplicy, on the homestead bill, on the nefarious 
attempt to seize Cuba — all questions antedating 
the war, are among the historical headlands of the 
epoch; and he was ever the same bold and fearless 
advocate of that policy which was at an early day 
to take control of the destinies of the United 
States. 

Meantime, although Mr. Hale had gained a hear- 
ing for freedom in the United States senate, and 
the subject of slavery was now open for discussion 
everywhere, yet it is beyond denial that the insti- 
tution had made a distinct advance in its aggres- 
sions upon the North, so far as public measures 
and its apparent hold upon public opinion were 
concerned. The decade from 1850 to 1860 was 
the aggressive decade of slavery. Up to that time 
a geographical barrier had stood against its ad- 
vance beyond certain definite limits. But that was 
broken down by their success in securing the pas- 
sage of the fugitive slave law by the aid of North- 



JOHN P. HALE. 69 

ern votes, and in enforcing it in the streets of 
Boston, where the master did " with his slaves sit 
down at the foot of Bunker Hill monument," as 
Mr. Toombs had insolently boasted to Mr. Hale, 
although in defiance of the ominous ground-swell 
of liberty that shook the walls of Faneuil Hall, — 
by their victory in overthrowing the Missouri com- 
promise, by the border-ruffian outrages in Kansas 
whereby a soil predestined to freedom was drenched 
with the blood of freemen, and by the Dred Scott 
decision. At the opening of that decade the Dem- 
ocratic party had already fallen into the deepest 
degradation and servility to slavery. The rabble 
of the cities, poisoned with race antipathies and 
the vanity and pride of power, had been played 
upon by the pliant demagogues of the North till 
they exhibited a sort of rabies at the mention of 
the subject of slavery. The Whig party, whose 
public utterances had been till this time full of 
sounding phrases protesting its fidelity to liberty, 
was rapidly and surely passing under the yoke. 
Cotton and trade, greed and conservatism, had 
done their work, had honeycombed that great 
organization, and left it only a thin and superficial 
veneerino; of anti-slavery sentiment. So deter- 
mined was the North to stand by all the legal pre- 
tensions of slavery, that all hope of its removal in 
the Southern states, which idealists and ultra 
abolitionists were dreaming of, was now foreclosed. 
The only problem left was to prevent its extension. 
It could not be hoped to recede — how far should it 
advance? Indeed, the friends of freedom had con- 
fined their labors to the exclusion of slavery from 



70 JOHN P. HALE. 

the territories, not venturing to assert their power 
over it even in the District of Columbia, where the 
clanking of the bondman's chains was to be heard 
till the nation should be shaken by the throes of 
the Civil War. The Free-Soilers never claimed 
any right to legislate against slavery in the South- 
ern states. "Within those limits it was safe; was 
entrenched behind the constitution, and might have 
remained undisturbed to this day, had they abided 
by that line. But the South was judicially blind, 
and made every advance a pretence for a new 
aggression, until every congress was the theatre 
of a conflict on the subject ever growing more and 
more intense. 

Look at a partial catalogue of its excesses in this 
decade. In 1850 by the compromise measures 
congress renounced all authority over the internal 
slave trade, exempted California, New Mexico, 
and Utah from all restriction as to slavery, and 
enacted the fugitive slave law, throwing to the 
North the poor sop of abolishing the slave trade 
in the District of Columbia. The Missouri com- 
promise was overthrown in 185-t, and the territory 
north of 36 deg. 30 min., supposed to have been 
shielded from the possibility of contamination, 
thrown open to slavery. The climax of outrage 
upon the North was reached in the Dred Scott de- 
cision, whereby the highest judicial tribunal of the 
land delivered a judgment which overturned the 
law of the world that slavery was a merely local 
and municipal institution, and announced the doc- 
trine that the constitution protected the slave-holder 
in his " property " wherever he might go. By this 



JOHN P. HALE. 71 

decision, making slavery national and freedom 
sectional, slavery became the public law of the re- 
public; and its unparalleled infamy justifies Mr. 
Hale's indignation when he said in 1864, " In my 
humble judgment if there was one single, palpable, 
obvious, duty that we owed to ourselves, owed to 
the country, owed to honesty, owed to God, when 
we came into power, it was to drive a plowshare 
from turret to foundation stone of the supreme 
court of the United States." 

Slavery felt itself secure only so long as it could 
push itself into new fields; and therefore not only 
was the door to every territory thrown open, but 
a raid was organized upon Cuba, and a piratical 
jingoism held out a most tempting lure, even to 
cool Northern statesmen, who could but warm to 
the idea of a universal sway over the world's des- 
tinies. Sixty years before, the founders of the 
constitution were ashamed of slavery, and tried to 
hide it away under obscure phrases from history 
and the public opinion of the world. Now, minis- 
ters of the gospel unblushingly defended it. The 
presence of slavery had of course subjugated the 
Southern churches — and the North had largely 
followed suit under the stimulus of the commercial 
greed that occupied the pews. Mrs. Stowe's satire 
upon the clergy was warranted by the " South-side 
Views " so plentifully served up to us, and by the 
overworking of the texts in which Canaan was 
cursed, and Onesimus sent back by Paul to his 
master Philemon. Even Dr. Channing's society 
deserted him in the later years of his life on ac- 
count of his anti-slavery views. 



72 JOHN P. HALE. 

During this awful time, while the republic was 
writhing under its Nessus's shirt of slavery, goad- 
ing and irritating it at every step of its painful 
progress, cowards and time-servers were lapping 
themselves in the comfortable assurance that slav- 
ery, being wrong, was a doomed institution — and 
in the conservative belief or the dastardly pretence 
that change was to come about solely by super- 
natural means, by slow spiritual influences proceed- 
ing from personal religion. And so we saw every- 
where around us that spirit of concession, the lack 
of moral firmness, the recreancy to principle, the 
abject submission to Southern usurpations, which 
invited constant aggression. During this period 
freedom was indeed under a ban at Washington. 
Adulation of the slave oligarchy was the fashion. 
To be a Free-Soiler was to be excluded from the 
common courtesies and privileges of the capital. 
All cabinet positions, all public offices, all com- 
mittees in the senate and house were held by pro- 
slavery men. An infamous code of morality, both 
national and international, prevailed. Mr. Buchan- 
an boldly proclaimed in the Ostend manifesto that 
if Spain should refuse to sell Cuba to the United 
States, " then by every law, human and divine, we 
should be justified in wresting it from Spain, if we 
have the power." In the raids upon Cuba and Cen- 
tral America, the ill-concealed designs against 
Mexico, — then disorganized, disintegrating, and 
liable at any moment to fall into our hands under 
one pretence or another, — and the scarcely veiled 
purpose to establish a great continental slave 
empire, — in all these the perfidy and rapacity of 



JOHN P. HALE. 73 

the system, and its thirst for rapine and subjuga- 
tion were fully displayed; and in these acts how 
vividly we now see, as if on a canvas painted by 
lightning, all the black features of the moral mon- 
ster, which, in the war that followed, displayed the 
wild and frenzied ferocity, the desperate abandon 
of cruelty, which was seen in the reign of terror 
of the French regicides. 

Never in our history, however, were all ap- 
pearances so deceptive as in this terrible decade 
when slavery was holding high carnival in the 
great republic, when it dominated society, and had 
seized upon every attribute of power in the govern- 
ment. There are those here who knew Washing- 
ton between 1850 and 1860. The star of slavery 
was at its zenith, and as it began to descend to its 
setting, it lit up the western horizon with unwont- 
ed brilliancy. One saw its characteristic pride, its 
patrician charm of manners, its stately elegance of 
forms and ceremonies. But these were only a 
meretricious gilt of hospitality and courtesy, 
shrouding the darkest designs that ever lurked in 
the heart of a dominant class. As the Count de 
Segur said of France in the day of her approach- 
ing- doom, " the old social edifice was undermined, 
although there was no slightest sign of its ap- 
proaching fall." 

There lay latent there the revolution, to be pre- 
cipitated by its own madness indeed, but a revolu- 
tion surcharged with the dormant energies of lib- 
erty, — revolution, which the Due de Broglie calls 
" that delicate and dreadful right which slumbers 
at the feet of all human institutions, as their sad 



74 JOHN P. HALE. 

and final safeguard." The slave oligarchy, like a 
man smitten with mortal disease but thinking him- 
self in perfect health, was never fuller of arrogance, 
of fire, of the pride that goeth before a fall. Wash- 
ington was full of such characters as only appear 
in a society on the brink of perishing, — its Masons 
and Slidells, its Davises and Footes, its Soules and 
Brookses, and Wigfalls. But let us thank God 
for the irrepressible instincts of every institution at 
war with the social order. Slavery was a Philis- 
tine that could not keep the peace. Conscious 
that it could only live by extending itself, it was 
ever aiming at new conquests. It overreached it- 
self. Encroachment after encroachment, outrage 
upon outrage followed, till at length, under the 
faithful resistance of a few men, of whom John P. 
Hale was the pioneer, the question of slavery be- 
came flagrant and omnipresent. It met men at 
every turn in debate, in some form or other it min- 
gled in every discussion of fact or principle, and 
finally became the sole issue to be tried on the 
battle-field of American politics. The delicate 
silence, the bated breath with which " the peculiar 
institution " had been regarded, gave way to the 
open discussions of congress, of the pulpit awak- 
ened to its high office, of the press, and of the 
hustings all over the land. Its supposed sac-red- 
ness and immunity from criticism were things of 
the past. No longer was this gangrened sore, this 
leprous stain shielded from public gaze by the 
denial of the right of petition, of liberty of debate, 
or by a profound unconsciousness, or indifference, 
or the trembling fears of those who profited by a 



JOHN P. HALE. 75 

political or commercial alliance with slave-holders 
— that mercantile class which Burke described as 
" snuffing with delight the cadaverous scent of 
lucre." 

]^or was the time without other hopeful signs. 
The wheat was getting sifted from the chaff. The 
Whig party became defunct in 1852, and the 
Democratic party, under its heavy load, was totter- 
ing to its fall. The Conscience "Whigs were being 
differentiated from the Cotton Whigs, and Sew- 
ard, Adams, and Palfrey, Sumner and Wilson, 
Allen and Dana, appeared, while Chase and 
Banks, Wilmot and Grow, Rantonl and Bout well, 
answered back from the Democratic ranks, and 
took their places in the line that was being formed 
against slavery. And so, as the end of this decade 
approached, over which slavery was to plunge in- 
to a yawning abyss, the clouds that had been gath- 
ering on the horizon began to overspread and 
blacken the political sky. The air was over- 
charged with electricity. The day of retribution 
was at hand, and we stood in the vestibule of the 
rebellion. But when the sky darkened and the 
storm came on, such had been the charity, the for- 
bearance, and the love for his whole country of 
the first anti-slavery senator, that he could with a 
perfect conscience say with the parliamentary Gen- 
eral Waller, " The great God who is the searcher 
of my heart knows with what reluctance I go upon 
this service, and with what perfect hatred I look 
upon a war without an enemy." He had stood, 
proclaiming the solemn warnings of history, for 
thirteen years in the United States senate. By 



76 JOHN P. HALE. 

masterly argument, again and again had he dem- 
onstrated the departure of the country from the 
principles of the constitution and of the men who 
made it, and in burning eloquence shown that slav- 
ery was a barbarism and an anachronism. In vain 
were his appeals ; but he, at least, had stood 

" Among innumerable false unmoved, 
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, 
His loyalty he kept, his love, Ins zeal ; 
Nor number, nor example with him wrought 
To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind 
Though single. From amidst them forth he passed 
Long way through hostile scorn, which he sustained 
Superior, nor of violence feared aught ; 
And with retorted scorn his back he turned 
On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed." 

I would not willingly offend even the shred of 
what was once conceived to be a party sentiment, 
by any word of indictment of American slavery, 
much less of the men, some of them honest and 
honored, who tried to save it in its fall. But if I 
rightly apprehend the present conditions of public 
opinion, the horror of it and the hostility to its ex- 
tension and aggrandizement which guided the po- 
litical course of Mr. Hale, are now become the 
sovereign and universal principle of men and na- 
tions. We have cast slavery aside into the outer 
limbo of things we would fain forget. We have 
flung it into the dark dungeon of loathsome 
things; the foul heap of discarded relics of barba- 
rism and cruelty; the stakes, the racks, and thumb- 
screws; the Towers and Bastiles of the bloody 
past of humanity, and there are none to-day so 
poor as to do it reverence. 



JOHN P. HALE. 77 

Political liberty is a development, and in reading 
history we mark the various stages of its evolution. 
The controversy of one generation becomes the 
settled doctrine of another, and the stone rejected 
of the builders becomes the head of the corner. I 
protest that I thresh over the old straw of contro- 
versy only because it is impossible to realize the 
stress of Mr. Hale's heroic warfare, and the sig- 
nificance of this memorial, without trying to un- 
derstand, as the present generation can only faint- 
ly do, the nature of that institution which it was 
the business of his life to destroy. Ah! dear 
friends, how many fearless young men, then in the 
flower of their strength, are now sleeping beneath 
the sods of the battle-field! How many maimed 
and wounded! How many families still in mourn- 
ing! How many mothers, wives, lovers, in tears 
that will not cease to flow! How many homes 
desolated never to be rebuilt! "What a sad conflict 
between two sections of one great people ! And what 
a price did the country pay for the peace it could 
have had for the asking by listening to the voice 
of warning and of conscience uttered for the first 
time in the senate by John P. Hale ! 

During the war Mr. Hale stood unflinchingly by 
all those principles with which his name and fame 
were associated, and about which the battle raged 
for four long years. He bore a conspicuous part 
in all the debates of the senate during the great 
struggle, — in vindication of the principles and con- 
duct of New England and New Hampshire, in 
denunciation of the fugitive slave law and efforts 
for its repeal, in defence of himself as counsel in 



78 JOHN P. HALE. 

the fugitive slave cases in Boston, and in Decem- 
ber, 1860, he made an eloquent appeal for the 
Union, which he loved with a devotion far deeper 
and warmer than that of those who had invoked 
its sacred authority in behalf of slavery for 
thirty years. As the contest progressed, and the 
black flag of slavery went down upon one after an- 
other of the bulwarks that had been erected for its 
defence in those sad years of its Quixotic blind- 
ness, he had the satisfaction of helping to wipe out 
the black code of the District of Columbia, and 
abolishing slavery itself there in 1862. Towards 
the close of his senatorial career he took a joyous 
part in the last mighty blows against the slave 
system, which blotted it out forever from our 
escutcheon — the emancipation of the slaves of reb- 
els, the repeal of the fugitive slave law, and, final- 
ly, the adoption of the 13th amendment to the con- 
stitution, which prohibited slavery forever there- 
after by the organic law of the land, amid the 
jubilations and fervent thanksgivings to God of the 
slave, and of every lover of liberty the world over. 

We are apt perhaps to lose sight of Mr. Hale's 
great merits as a general legislator in the splendor 
of his services for liberty. But a study of the 
public records will disclose his vigorous attention 
to the general business which came before congress, 
in which he labored with a tireless activity, an om- 
nipresent vigilance, and an inflexible persistency of 
purpose on every great question of administration 
as well as innumerable matters of detail. He par- 
ticipated in nearly every debate that took place in 
the senate, and was ever found the consistent advo- 



JOHN P. HALE. 79 

eate of a well denned administrative policy. He 
was an old-fashioned economist. Like Fox, he 
might perhaps have boasted his ignorance of the 
" dismal science" of political economy; but of the 
economies and frugalities of the truly republican 
house-keeping of our early days he was an unswer- 
ving devotee. He was invariably for reform, for 
the reduction of expenses, the correction of abuses, 
the curtailment of extravagance, the lopping-off of 
superfluities and sinecures, of perquisites and ex- 
cesses in official emoluments. He was against con- 
structive charges and salaries, jobbery, and profli- 
gacy of every kind. He was against aggression 
and against spoliation; he was the implacable fqe 
of monopolies, of unjust claims, of extortionate raids 
upon the treasury, of frauds and corruptions of 
every kind. He was the friend and champion of 
the laborer on the public works, the private soldier, 
and the common sailor. The Congressional Globe 
for twenty years is replete with his untiring efforts 
for the masses against the classes. He returned 
daily to the ever recurring struggle on these lines 
with a vigilance, a courage, a boldness, and fertility 
of resource admirable in the last degree, and in un- 
changing fidelity to these principles was never 
found wanting for sixteen years in the United 
States senate, ^"ot the least of his titles to praise 
is found in the brave stand he took against the 
corruptions of the navy department, and his fearless 
independence in exposing maladministration in his 
own party, at a time when by so doing he subjected 
himself to the criticism of some friends, though he 
supported every step of Mr. Lincoln's administration 



80 JOHN P. HAX.E. 

in putting down the Rebellion. His activity as a 
senator diffused itself over all the questions of his 
day: — the homestead law, internal improvements, 
foreign and domestic commerce, the tariff, the army 
and navy, education, the judiciary, patents, banks, 
appropriations, the civil lists, pensions, public lands, 
sub-treasury, printing, the census, the franking 
privilege, — these all felt his touch. The topics he 
discussed embraced the whole range of our foreign 
and domestic relations, our trade and administration 
in every variety of form. His views were always 
clear, practical, comprehensive. His logic, wit, 
and humor, his tenacious memory of legislative prec- 
edents, his old-fashioned frugalities, his apt illus- 
trations, his parliamentary skill, which justified 
General Cass in calling him " a most adroit parlia- 
mentary tactician," — all these were brought into full 
requisition in the general business of the sessions. 
He was not a man of one idea. He was an idealist 
indeed, but no idealist ever had a more stalwart 
common sense, or less of the visionary about him; 
and, though he was not always right, no public man 
ever took so decided a part on a great variety of 
subjects and made fewer mistakes Despite his 
anomalous position as a senator, he accomplished 
many things in general legislation which entitle him 
to public gratitude, and was frustrated by the extrav- 
agant tendencies of his time in others which would 
have been still more beneficial to the country, had 
it been wise enough to follow his lead. He was 
the most typical Jeffersonian Democrat of his time. 
Mr. Hale was not much of a party man. He was 
not one of those, — 



JOHN P. HALE. 81 

"Who born for the universe, narrowed his mind, 
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind." 

He was 

" For a patriot too cool, for a drudge disobedient, 
And too proud of tbe right to pursue the expedient." 

Political ties always sat loosely upon him. He 
used party connections to subserve purposes, and 
when he thought his duty lay in another direction 
he burst asunder the partisan leading-strings with- 
out compunction. He was neither a party leader 
nor a party follower. He was not pliant; his mind 
was simple and direct; he wanted policy, and was 
no more tolerant of wrong in his own party than in 
any other. Hated by the enemies of liberty on the 
one hand, he was assailed by zealots of freedom on 
the other for his conciliatory temper, his freedom 
from political acerbity, and his refusal to endorse 
projects of disunion or any other extravagances. 
A sound discretion, and even a wise conservatism 
governed him. He loved to travel super antiquas 
vias, and the precedents of Anglo-Saxon freedom 
were the guiding stars of his political life. Unwill- 
ing to go all length, and too independent to submit 
to dictation, he represented no party, no group 
even, — he was no exponent of others ; he was a type 
of himself. Without affecting airs of independence^ 
he was the most truly independent man in America. 
Those of us who loved him and would stand guard 
over his fame, are not pained to hear, as we some- 
times do, that he knew how to behave in the mi- 
nority much better than in the majority. 

Mr. Hale's general political views were broad and 
well defined and coordinated, and gave unity of 



82 JOHN P. HALE. 

purpose to his political life. His creed at bottom 
was embodied by Burke in his definition of the 
principles of true politics as " those of morality en- 
larged," or, in other words, that in politics " noth- 
ing is right that is not right, just that is not just" 
He had none of that revolutionary spirit which 
rudely breaks with all the traditions of the past. If 
there were contradictions in our institutions, he was 
content to tolerate them till the general conscience 
and intelligence should be awakened to such anom- 
alies, and make those institutions homogeneous. He 
was no innovator or fanatic. He stood by the fabric 
of the constitution, and the Union he reverenced 
with a fervor not surpassed even by Webster himself. 
In this respect, in his willingness, often expressed, 
even to abide by and carry out fairly, honestly, and 
in good faith what were termed the compromises of 
the constitution, he differed toto coelo from Garrison, 
Phillips, and others of the abolitionists. Let us do 
justice to those from whom Mr. Hale differed in this 
respect. Such was their view of the pro-slavery 
clauses of the constitution that they indignantly 
spurned them, and tied for refuge to that " higher 
law " which Mr. Webster in derision said u soared 
an eagle's flight above the tops of the Alleghanies." 
They dealt only with the abstract question of right, 
claimed a discharge of conscience from all complicity 
with slavery, and demanded an immediate and un- 
conditional manumission . 

It is still an unsettled question whether the efforts 
of statesmen like Mr. Hale were hampered by im- 
practicable theories of doctrinaires who renounced 
political action as implying allegiance to a constitu- 



JOHN P. HALE. 83 

tion which recognized and sanctioned slavery. 
Many regarded these scruples as puerile, and a hin- 
drance to the progress of the cause within constitu- 
tional and legal lines. There was, however, but 
little danger to liberty from those who refused to 
obey the fugitive slave law. History is full of 
proofs that a disobedience of the statutes of men 
may imply a higher and deeper reverence for the 
laws of God. Admitting the danger of leaving 
citizens, each for himself, to judge of the law and 
their obligation to obey it, yet those who are so 
tremblingly afraid of stranding the ship of state on 
this Scylla, should remember the awful dangers of 
the Charybdis on the other side, and that no gov- 
ernment worthy to live was ever wrecked by those 
who obeyed the behests of conscience. 

We are not here to-day to cast a doubt upon those 
men who formed the American Anti-Slavery soci- 
ety, which Mr. Frederick Douglass calls " the most 
efficient generator of anti-slavery sentiment in the 
country," and whose heroism has given them an 
enduring place in history. But, whether it be to 
his credit or discredit, it is certainly true that Mr. 
Hale had little or no sympathy with extremists; 
made no assaults upon church or state; stood aloof 
from all schemes of disunion, and discountenanced 
every thought of disloyalty. This was not his line 
of thinking or of action; he proposed to act politi- 
cally in the Union, by circumscribing slavery and 
pressing it to death by a cordon of free states. Mr. 
Hale took the ground that the constitution was 
essentially an anti-slavery document. The Buffalo 
convention of 1848 admitted that slavery in the 



84 JOHN P. HALE. 

states was protected by the constitution, and the 
Free-Soil party had no intention to attack it where 
it existed under the sanction of law. The Free-Soil 
convention at Pittsburg in 1852 neither raised nor 
lowered the standard; and its lineal successor, the 
Republican party, did not at all grapple with eman- 
cipation in the states, — not even in the District of 
Columbia, — its whole policy looked simply to its 
circumscription. But the event shows how urgent 
and how indispensable was the need of a Free-Soil 
party. That want Mr. Hale and others supplied, 
no doubt holding, in solution at least, the faith 
which Mr. Lincoln afterwards so tersely formulated 
in the memorable words : " If a house be divided 
against itself it cannot stand. I believe this gov- 
ernment cannot permanently endure half slave and 
half free." They had found the heel of Achilles; 
they had divined the weakness of slavery, and the 
essential conditions of its progress and immunity. 
Then only the great problem approached its solu- 
tion when " no more slavery extension" became the 
watchword of a distinct political organization, draw- 
ing to itself more and more the humane sympathies 
and the generous ardor of the world. 

I have said that Mr. Hale stood by the constitu- 
tion. So thoroughly loyal, indeed, was he to that 
instrument, that amid the thunder and agony of 
the Rebellion, he parted company with his political 
friends on the confiscation bill, which he opposed 
because it was not in accordance with the constitu- 
tion. Said he: "I want constitutional liberty left 
to us when the war is over. Constitutional liberty 
is the great boon for which we are striving, and we 



JOHN P. HALE. 85 

must see to it that, in our zeal to put down the Re- 
bellion, we do not trample on that; and, that when 
the war is over, and our streamers float in the air, 
in that breeze also may still float the old flag, and 
over this regenerated country may still sway a 
sacred and unviolated constitution, in the faithful 
maintenance of which in the hour of our peril and 
our trial we have not faltered." 

But he was no priest of the constitution. His 
divinations were at another shrine, even that of 
liberty. We have had such a priest. He stands 
there, [pointing to Mr. Webster's statue] overlook- 
ing us with his awful solemnity, his brow of Jove, 
and all the majesty of his god-like presence to-day. 

But with Mr. Hale the constitution was no fetich. 
He loved it for what it was, and as he understood 
it. He could reverence it only for what it meant; 
and, if shown that it meant the perpetual domina- 
tion of one race or class and the bondage of another, 
he would have looked upon it as the Liberator 
proclaimed it in 1844, as " a covenant with death, 
and an agreement with hell." If it meant that, John 
P. Hale could no more have obeyed and endured it 
than could Pym or Hampden the star chamber, the 
collection of ship money, or the exactions of arbi- 
trary prerogative, or Samuel Adams the enforce- 
ment of the stamp act, Luther the sale of indul- 
gences, or Mirabeau the perpetual dominance of the 
Bourbons. His was a higher and nobler interpre- 
tation of the organic law of our fathers; and, claim- 
ing shelter under its broad a?gis, he stood forth in 
defiance of the delusion of his time to assert the 
essential brotherhood of man, and his right to the 



86 JOHN P. HALE. 

liberties formulated in the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence. In other days, a century or two before, this 
intrepid stand in the face of power would have sub- 
jected him to a glorious imprisonment or to the 
block. But truth was already emancipated from 
the grosser forms of tyranny. Who can doubt 
that even if the old means of extirpating freedom of 
thought had still existed, John P. Hale would have 
taken his life in his hand, and proclaimed unfalter- 
ingly the faith that was in him, like John Pym, 
who, in the crisis of English liberty cried that he 
" would much rather suffer for speaking the truth 
than that the truth should suffer for want of his 
speaking/' 

Those are rightly accounted great who blaze out 
new pathways for the race. Says Froude, " Those 
whom the world agrees to call great, are those who 
have done or produced something of permanent 
value to humanity." Do any of our American 
statesmen better answer this requirement? In a 
great crisis his was the initiative. He grappled 
single-handed and alone with the greatest problem 
and the highest duty of his time. Slavery lay like 
a night-mare upon the republic, weakening, poison- 
ing, degrading it, arresting its development, stilling 
its liberty. And who, we may well ask, aroused it 
from its torpor, from the body of its death? Who 
so emphatically as he gave the word for the resur- 
rection of the true national spirit? It Avas he, in- 
deed, who impressed the heart and brain of his gen- 
eration, who pronounced the right word at the right 
moment, and uttered it in accents that burned it into 
the imaginations and feelings of millions. When 



JOHN P. HALE. 87 

other men called great were dallying and compro- 
mising, and striking hands with an evil with which 
there should have been no truce and no terms, he 
assailed it in its stronghold, and carried its strong- 
est outwork. He first attuned the voice of a state 
to the rhythm of liberty, and from his lips first 
sounded the high note of freedom in the United 
States senate. And in that great body, where me- 
diocrity cannot for any length of time seize the palm 
of excellence, where no pretence can escape detect- 
ion or weakness pass for strength, he maintained 
his position triumphantly against all assailants for 
sixteen years. He mingled in all the contentions 
of the most tempestuous period of our history ; one 
after another he broke lances with all the great ac- 
tors on the national scene and was never discomfited. 
He has left in the public records a body of utter- 
ances worthy of the study of after-times, made un- 
der every variety of circumstances, under insult and 
contumely, under taunt and provocation; yet no- 
where, on his part, is there any recrimination, any 
appeal to passion, to unworthy prejudice, to unman- 
ly feeling; but everywhere and throughout a genu- 
ine sincerity, a noble philanthropy, a sublime enthu- 
siasm for humanity, and an unswerving faith in its 
ultimate destiny. You shall find in all his impass- 
ioned appeals not one doubt cast upon the reality of 
human progress, or the eventual triumph of those 
principles which had asserted their control of his 
political life. 

From a recent review of this whole series of 
speeches and votes in and out of the national arena, 
I am impressed with the conviction that there is no 



88 JOHN P. HALE. 

more honorable and conspicuous record in American 
public life. It is a record marked by a high ethical 
tone, by conscientious conviction, by fidelity to truth, 
by a standard of public duty modelled upon the 
best traditions of Anglo-Saxon freedom, and by 
maxims drawn from a wide study and clear reading 
of the history of human liberty and progress in all 
ages. I go further. He was the man for his time 
and mission. He had a message for his generation, 
and, as much as any man ever was in political an- 
nals, was providentially sent and equipped for the 
great tournament in which he played his part. And 
I add the further belief that no intelligent, reflective, 
and unprejudiced mind, conversant personally with 
the events of that time, can rise from the study of 
his public efforts and the story of his life, without the 
conviction that no other public man in America was 
equal to what he did, — that none had the peculiar 
qualities in so high a degree to fill the great post to 
which he was called as the first anti-slavery senator. 
Engaged in the work of statesmanship, which 
largely diverted him from the studies and practice 
of his profession, Mr. Hale was still a most distin- 
guished lawyer. He occasionally appeared in the 
courts of New Hampshire throughout his career; 
and there was no time after 1840 when his services 
were not sought in cases of the highest importance, 
and when he was not esteemed to hold a place as 
an advocate in the front rank of the profession. In 
1851 he was engaged as senior counsel, with such 
lawyers as Dana and Ellis, in the argument of the 
slave rescue cases in Boston. In his recent book 
Mr. Dana speaks of him as having argued the case 



JOHN P. HALE. 89 

of Lewis Hayden nobly and with passages of great 
eloquence. It was in this case, in the defence of 
the rescuers of Shadrach, that occurred that won- 
derful burst of eloquence : 

"John Debree claims that he owns Shadrach. 
Owns what? Owns a man! Suppose, gentlemen, 
John Debree should claim an exclusive right to the 
sunshine, the moon, or the stars! Would you sanc- 
tion the claim by your verdict? And yet, gentle- 
men, the stars shall fall from heaven, the moon 
shall grow old and decay, the sun shall fail to give 
its light, the heavens shall be rolled together as a 
scroll, but the soul of the despised and hunted 
Shadrach shall live on with the life of God himself ! 
I wonder if John Debree will claim that he owns 
him then ! " 

In one of his letters Mr. Sumner said that Mr. 
Hale had said many things better than any of the 
rest had been able to say them, and referred to this 
speech particularly as one that had been reported 
to him as worthy of Curran or Erskine. 

Still later he was leading counsel in the defence 
of Theodore Parker, who stood indicted for ob- 
structing the fugitive slave law process in the case 
of Anthony Burns. The trial came on in April, 
1855, and attracted universal interest. The indict- 
ment was quashed by the court upon the argument 
of Mr. Hale's associates, and so odious was the pros- 
ecution that the representatives of the government 
were only too eager to hide themselves from public 
scorn by entering a nolle prosequi in all other cases. 

But Mr. Parker afterward published a noble de- 
fence, which he dedicated " to John Parker Hale 



90 JOHN P. HALE. 

and Charles Mayo Ellis, Magnanimous Lawyers, 
for their labors in a noble profession," and speaks of 
them as " generous advocates of humanity, equal- 
ling the glories of Holt and Erskine, of Mackintosh 
and Romilly, in their eloquent and fearless defence 
of truth, right, and love." 

In this " Defence " Mr. Parker also refers to 
Mr. Hale as " the noble advocate of justice and 
defender of humanity," and as " renewing the 
virtuous glories of his illustrious namesake, Sir 
Matthew Hale," — and, again, of " the masterly 
eloquence which broke out from the great human 
heart of my friend, Mr. Hale, and rolled like the 
Mississippi in its width, its depth, its beauty, and 
its continuous and unconquerable strength." 

To those who knew Mr. Parker, himself an ora- 
tor, philanthropist, and one of the grandest charac- 
ters of his age, such tributes to Mr. Hale's genius 
are an offering of no small value, and not without 
a deep significance. 

The earliest efforts of Mr. Hale announced him 
an orator of unusual force and power. Even before 
practice had given him a national reputation, he 
was endowed highly with the gift of persuasion and 
a captivating charm of manner. He possessed in 
an uncommon degree many of the external advan- 
tages of a popular speaker, — an imposing person, 
a countenance of extraordinary manly beauty and 
nobleness, a well modulated and resonant voice, a 
prompt command of words, a perfect command of 
his temper. His language was fluent; his manner, 
easy, confident, unaffected; his delivery, impressive; 
his self-possession, perfect. His eloquence was 



JOHN P. HALE. 



spontaneous, rather than the fruit of patient labor. 
It yielded to no rules of art; it was clogged and en- 
cumbered by no useless impedimenta of learning or 
philosophy; but it came like a fountain bursting 
from the earth; it Avas the warm effluence of a sym- 
pathetic heart, a fervid soul, a deep humanity, find- 
ing utterance on the tongue, inspiring every accent, 
and informing every feature. 

In the presentation of a cause to a popular audi- 
ence he was wellnigh irresistible. His clear and 
copious diction, his imperturbable good nature, his 
fairness and generosity, his apt stories, his manifest 
sincerity and disinterestedness cleared all obstacles 
from his path and gave him a power before great 
popular assemblies in which he had but few rivals. 
Traditions still live of his triumphs as a popular 
orator before great masses of people under the open 
sky, which alone seemed to give room for the full 
play of his faculties, as it did . to O'Connell, as 
well as those forensic contests where verdicts were 
charmed away from the leaders of the bar by the 
sorceries of his eloquent tongue. 

He was the most natural of orators. His best 
efforts were short, impassioned improvisations, ap- 
parently without study or forethought. He did not 
torment invention for words. He affected no the- 
atrical attitudes, and was little solicitous for either 
diction or manner, but was content to grasp strong- 
ly, and present forcibly and earnestly, the sub- 
stance of his argument, and always with a definite 
purpose in view. 

His speeches underwent no revision. He never 
cared to give them the last polish of his pen. 



92 JOHN P. HALE. 

They were dashed on' with a careless and negligent 
cise, and were extemporary in the sense of having 
never been composed in set phrase, or laboriously 
fashioned into periods. He scattered these gems 
of speech like a king whose resources Avere as 
capricious as inexhaustible. He was thoughtless of 
their fate, and now they have to be laboriously 
hunted out from the columns of the Congressional 
Globe, or of fugitive newspapers. But they will 
repay the search. If they are not marked by liter- 
ary finish, they are instinct with fervent earnest- 
ness and impetuosity. Everything was done by him 
without apparent exertion. His efforts seemed to 
flow from an exuberant fountain, and bore no marks 
of labor or tension of mind. 

Without any pretensions to profound learning, 
Mr. Hale had those immediate intellectual re- 
sources that give readiness in debate. To the 
very marked combination of parliamentary talents 
already named, he added a prodigious memory, 
holding his facts firmly in hand, and drawn up 
ready for instant mobilization. It would be a mis- 
take to suppose him lacking in mental power; he 
was never wanting, when occasion demanded, to 
the logical support of his positions. Although he 
was never very patient of laborious research, nor 
inclined to 

" Scorn delights and live laborious days," 

yet his constitutional learning, especially in all those 
departments requisite to the defence of personal 
liberty, was ample; but what is better, the learning 
he had was aglow with vitality, always at the com- 



JOHN P. HALE. 98 

mand of a tenacious memory, and warmed by his 
eager blood and intellectual vehemence. If any 
doubt his great ability, even when stripped of the 
glamour of oratory, let him carefully read his 
speeches on the constitutional status of slavery, the 
Dred Scott decision, the supreme court, and the re- 
peal of the fugitive slave law. He sustained him- 
self with ease in the senate in competition with the 
giants of debate, and did all with such good nature 
as to provoke no hatred or personal violence. He 
went in and out unarmed amid the murderous as- 
sassins of slavery, holding aloft the banner of free- 
dom, " still full high advanced," till Chase and 
Sumner, Seward and Wade came and interlocked 
their shields with his, and the invincible phalanx of 
Liberty was never broken. 

I am at a loss to compare John P. Hale with any 
other orator. In the spontaneous and easy play of 
extraordinary natural powers he was not unlike 
Fox, the great English orator and statesman. Nor 
was he unlike that greatest debater that ever lived 
in the vehement rush and torrent of his declama- 
tion; and hearing him sometimes, when he rose 
almost above competition in bursts of indescribable 
power, we seemed to realize Porson's meaning 
when he said, — " Mr. Pitt conceives his sentences 
before he utters them. Mr. Fox throws himself into 
the middle of his and leaves it to God Almighty 
to get him out again." So it was with Mr. Hale. 
He soared to the most adventurous heights of elo- 
quence ; but, when you were trembling for his fall, 
he always came safely to earth again from the most 
daring flight, and alighted on his feet, the orator of 



94 JOHN P. HALE. 

common sense, of shrewd mother-wit, of homely 
and commonplace illustration, as well as the emo- 
tional, kindling orator of enthusiasm, his heart on 
fire, and his lips touched with a divine flame. 

But, after all, there is in every great orator a 
something indescribable, a something peculiar to 
himself, which differentiates him from all others. 
Mr. Hale imitated no one, and was himself inimit- 
able, though he had studied the great orators of 
antiquity, and had kindled his torch at the altar 
of Chatham and Burke, Fox and Erskine. His 
spontaneous style, not formed by extensive reading, 
and able to dispense with a critical literary knowl- 
edge, was not like that of Burke or Gladstone, but 
resembled more the splendid oratory of John Bright, 
an instrument capable of sounding all the depths of 
passionate emotion, of touching the deepest chords 
of human feeling, and of lighting up the sentiments 
of freedom with unspeakable pathos and splendor. 

But if, as all its true devotees do, we ascribe to 
eloquence a heavenly origin, and give it that office 
which so wins our hearts, if we say that no man is 
ever a true orato:' without being the spokesman of 
some great cause, that God touches no man's lips 
with that celestial fire without intending thereby to 
burn up some giant wrong, how nobly does Mr. 
Hale fill the character! Who, in this sense, among 
all our historic Americans, was truer to his divine 
appointment than he? 

Mr. Hale was unique in this, that much of 
his effectiveness as a speaker was due to his 
overflowing wit and humor. His quick percep- 
tions, genial temperament, and acute sense of the 



JOHN P. HALE. 95 

ludicrous made him a natural humorist. In repar- 
tee he was incomparable, and his apt and homely 
illustrative stories enlivened the United States 
senate for sixteen years. An ardent admirer of 
Mr. Hale most happily says, — " The jests which 
lightened his public addresses were not, however, 
without their disadvantages. They sometimes gave 1 
an impression of levity which formed no part of his 
character. As there is in art an ignoble and a 
noble grotesque, and in poetry a sardonic and a 
just yet not malignant satire, so there is in oratory 
a humor which degrades and another which 
attracts to uplift the hearer. This was the humor 
of our orator ; like the wit of Lincoln, it was always 
serious in its application, an instrument for noble 
appeal or impressive illustration, a foil for grave 
discourse or earnest invocation." 

It would be pleasant to recall some of those 
sayings of his which so illustrated his good nat- 
ure and broad catholicity of spirit, while they 
drove home some truth as no other means could. 
For instance, he compared statesmen who were 
afraid to oppose the Mexican War to the West- 
ern man who said he " got caught by opposing 
the last war, and he didn't mean to get caught 
again; he intended now to go for war, pestilence, 
and famine." 

Speaking of President Polk's back-down in the 
Oregon treaty, he said, " The president exhibited a 
Christian meekness in the full scriptural degree; 
but he did n't inherit the blessing of the meek — he 
didn't get the land." 

He said, — "As to whether the Missouri com- 



96 JOHN P. HALE. 

promise had, as claimed, given peace to the coun- 
try, he didn't know how that might be, but he 
knew that it gave peace to the politicians who 
voted for it. It sent them down to their polit- 
ical graves, where they have rested in peace ever 
since. It settled them, if it did n't settle the coun- 
try." 

Senator Westcott called him to order, but in- 
formed him that he meant nothing personal. Mr. 
Hale said, "I am exceedingly obliged to the 
senator for his explanation. The question of order 
has been raised but twice since I have had the 
honor of a seat in the senate, and each time it was 
raised by the senator from Florida upon the sena- 
tor from New Hampshire. That satisfies me that 
there is nothing personal about the matter." 

Mr. Clemens, in a violent speech, asserted that 
the Union was already dissolved. Mr. Hale good- 
humoredly replied that it would be very comforting 
to many timid people to find that the dissolution of 
the Union had taken place and they did n't know 
it. " Once in my life," said he, " in the capacity of 
a justice of the peace, I was called on to officiate in 
uniting a couple in the bonds of matrimony. I 
asked the man if he would take the woman to be 
his wedded wife. He replied, ' To be sure; I came 
here to do that very thing.' I then put the ques- 
tion to the woman, — whether she would have the 
man for her husband, and, when she answered in 
the affirmative, I told them that they were husband 
and wife. She looked up with apparent astonish- 
ment, and inquired, 'Is that all?' 'Yes,' said I, 
' that is all.' ' Well,' said she, ' it is n't such a 



JOHN P. HALE. 97 

mighty affair as I expected it to be, after all.' If* 
this Union is already dissolved, it has produced 
less commotion in the act than I expected.*' 

In reply to Mr. Calhoun's complaint that the 
Missouri compromise had disturbed the equilibrium 
of the country, he said that it had disturbed no 
equilibrium but that of the Northern representa- 
tives who voted for it; that it threw them entirely 
off their equilibrium, which they hadn't regained 
yet, and never would. 

General Cass, in December, 1856, hoped God, in 
His mercy, would interpose in this slavery question 
before it was too late. Mr. Hale interjected, "He 
came pretty near it in the last election," whereupon 
General Cass was greatly shocked at the levity of so 
referring to the Supreme Being. 

Garrett Davis introduced a resolution that " ]STo 
negro, or person whose mother or grandmother was 
a negro, should be a citizen of the United States." 
Mr. Hale said, if in order, he would like to amend 
by putting in his great-grandmother also. Of 
course Mr. Davis was highly indignant at such 
buffoonery on a sacred subject. 

The records are full of such pleasantries as 
these, which had a cutting edge of truth, but 
contributed not a little to allay the irritation and 
soften the asperities of debate. But Mr. Hale 
never indulged in personalities. He was a gen- 
tleman from the heart out. There was no bit- 
terness in his jests. He threw no poisoned arrows. 
He struck without hatred or malignity, and his 
blows left no ranklings and no immedicable wounds 
behind. 



98 JOHN P. HALE. 

" His wit in the combat, as gentle as bright. 
Ne'er carried a heart stain away on its blade." 

Consequently, when he retired from the senate, he 
bad as warm friends south as north of the line, and 
among them was one who had learned to hold him 
in a high personal esteem, the learned and eloquent 
Henry S. Foote, of Mississippi. 

But little remains to be added to the record of 
Mr. Hale's public life. In March, 1865, he was ap- 
pointed, by Mr. Lincoln, minister to Spain. This 
was a service suited neither to his temper, his taste, 
nor his capacity. He had cultivated no drawing- 
room arts ; he knew nothing of the assiduities of 
ante-chambers ; he was incapable of intrigue or 
flattery ; he was as free from servility as from 
arrogance ; he had not merely a speculative lik- 
ing for, but he was a practical exemplification of, 
democratic principles. The oratorical tempera- 
ment, which he possessed in so high a degree, 
harmonizes not with the cunning or even the 
unsleeping and tireless discretion of diplomacy, 
whose methods were foreign to the guileless frank- 
ness of that noble nature. 

In the heat of the hour, when Mr. Hale broke 
from allegiance to his party, and espoused the 
cause of the slave, he was the object of ungenerous 
imputations and even rancorous abuse. But party 
feelings seldom survive the generation they control, 
and the little hatred that had been mingled with 
these accusations had been outlived. But, 

" Be thou as chaste as ice, and pure as snow, 
Thou shalt not escape calumny." 



.JOHN P. HALE. 99 

In bis new position abroad, his ignorance of the 

language of the country, and the amiability of bis 
character, involved him temporarily in the toils of 
an adventurer. He had what some one has called 
"a want of clear sharp-sightedness as to others," 
and was exposed constantly to the arts of schemers 
and self-seekers. The mistakes of his life, which 
subjected him to unfounded aspersions, all arose 
out of his ingenuous and generous trust in others 
who were unworthy of his confidence. He became 
for a brief moment the victim of the calumnies of an 
unworthy subordinate, who had compromised him, 
as he had attempted the ruin of his predecessors in 
the same way, — one of those Jesuitical reptiles that 
infest the diplomatic purlieus of Europe, and wrig- 
gle in and out of the ante-chambers of royalty. 
For a time, as Burke said, " the hunt of obloquy 
pursued him with full cry." The shafts fell really 
harmless at his feet, but the injustice done him tem- 
porarily by some venomous newspapers embittered 
his own last days, and clouds the memory of his 
friends. 

I disdain to enter upon the vindication of the in- 
tegrity of a man who was careless, generous, of 
simple habits, who neglected his own interests, was 
indifferent to money, and who with abundant oppor- 
tunities to enrich himself, had he been base enough 
to use them, neither made nor spent, nor left a for- 
tune, — the man who was content to tread a thorny 
road; whose life was one of plain living and high 
thinking for himself and his family; whose face, one 
of the noblest I have ever looked upon, was itself a 
refutation of calumny; whose heart was as open as 



100 .IOHN P. HALE. 

the day; and whose integrity, shining like a star in 
the dark night of our country's trial, was "the im- 
mediate jewel of his soul." 

But I rest his exoneration not there — not upon 
such moral certainties as triumphantly satisfy his 
friends: but his defence, if defence were needed, 
may be rested upon legal proofs that will con- 
vince any court or jury of his absolute innocence. 
I have examined the whole case, and others of 
more authority than I, and I aver that the evi- 
dence against John P. Hale of any conscious 
dereliction of duty, anywhere, or at any time, is 
lighter and more unsubstantial than the summer 
zephyrs that float among these tree-tops over our 
heads; and that, according to all the canons of evi- 
dence in such inquiries, in that blameless life, public 
and private, there was nothing in the face of which 
he might not hold his head erect before the bar of 
God! 

His career was drawing to a close. He remained 
abroad five years, the last being spent with his fam- 
ily in travel on the continent, and in the vain hope 
of recruiting his shattered energies. His health, 
never good since the National Hotel sickness in 
1857, of which he was a victim, had now become 
seriously impaired, and he came home in 1870 with 
a broken constitution. He was welcomed on his 
return with formal receptions by his neighbors at 
home and by the legislature, of which a conqueror 
might have been proud. He lingered with us for 
three years afterwards, but with strength gone past 
recovery, and one ill following another made his 
last days painful ones. As one of his eulogists 



JOHN P. HALE. 101 

grandly said, " He was like a war-frigate which lies 
m port in peaceful times, its mighty armament and 
its scarred bulwarks only suggestive of stormy days 
when its ports were up, and its great gnus dealt 
havoc upon the foe." 

At length, on the 19th of November, 1873, the 
worn-out gladiator of freedom "fell on sleep," and 
joined the great company of his co-workers in all 
ages — the servant of God passed to " where beyond 
these voices there is peace." 

I have spoken mainly of the public life of Mr. 
Hale. But to his friends there seems something 
lacking in the sketch of a man so much loved and 
admired, without analyzing his character a little 
more closely, and drawing a portrait of somewhat 
warmer coloring, as befits his noble nature. Some- 
times a nearer view of public men diminishes the 
admiration and reverence we feel at a distance. 
Not so with Mr. Hale. His dearest place was in 
the hearts of his friends. Those who knew him in 
his domestic privacy, or where the statesman was 
sunk in the social intercourse of friendship, most 
unreservedly loved him, and speak in fullest admi- 
ration of his virtues and his genius. His morals 
were pure without austerity, and his life exem- 
plary by its observance of every detail of duty, 
Avhether it involved the active exertion of influ- 
ence for good, or abstinence from everything evil 
and not of good report. He was exempt from 
social and personal vices. In 1852 he said in the 
senate, " I have not tasted a drop of spirits for 
twenty years," and he never afterwards departed 
from that principle. 



102 JOHN P. HALE. 

In religion he was a liberal. He was averse to 
external ceremonies, and his love of personal inde- 
pendence made him jealous of every kind of eccle- 
siasticism. His religion was a matter between him- 
self and his God. As Burnet said of Sydney, " He 
was a Christian, but a Christian in his own way." 
Let none doubt for a moment, however, the essen- 
tial reverence of spirit of this free-thinking soul. If 
ever man had the Unseen but Indwelling Presence, 
if ever man was governed by those great invisible 
moral sanctions that we are wont to call the laws of 
God, if ever man had the faith which connected 
him with powers above him, but which he felt work- 
ing through him, it was John P. Hale. Sweetness, 
and light, and love, were indeed his creed and his 
practice. He went forth to the duties of life " as 
ever in his great Taskmaster's eye," — 

" He went in the strength of dependence 

To ti*ead where his Master trod, 
To gather and knit together 

The family of Go:l ; 
With a conscience freed from burdens, 

And a heart set free from care, 
To minister to every one, 

Always and everywhere." 

Endowed with noble gifts, Mr. Hale had what 
was greater, an aggressively noble character. He 
never cringed to power. He never sold himself for 
a vulgar or temporary applause. He was never 
false to his convictions; and he always had convic- 
tions. He didn't crawl and sneak through the 
world — he never lapped himself in that comfortable 
indifference to the moral law which is the devil's 



JOHN P. HALE. 103 

easy chair in which he hypnotizes the human con- 
science for a base acquiescence in wrong and 
iniquity. 

His principles were rooted in his character, 
and had an organic growth, — and he lived as if he 
had taken holy orders in their service. He was 
essentially a reformer, and had the courage to 
stand alone, which is the first requisite of leader- 
ship in a great cause. The blandishments of power 
had no attractions, and no terrors for him. He 
might have sat at the right hand of the throne, but 
disdainfully rejected the temptation, and held fast 
to his principles and his integrity. He perilled his 
political career to resist the further advance of 
slavery. His courage was superb; he never 
quailed before the face of man. He would have 
been equal to martyrdom, and would have gone to 
the block saying with Sydney, " Grant that I may 
die glorifying Thee that at the last Thou hast per- 
mitted me to be singled out as a witness of Thy 
truth, and, even by the confession of my opposers, 
for that old cause in which I was from my youth 
engaged." 

To him the service of liberty was neither prosaic 
nor perfunctory. It gave zest to his life. A strain 
of high devotion runs like a nerve of fire through 
all his public efforts. He had deeply pondered 
upon Sir Henry Vane, Algernon Sydney, Pym and 
Hampden, Bradshaw and Henry Martin, and the 
great judges who had stood for the liberty of the 
subject against kingly prerogative; and no man 
was more deeply imbued with free principles — not 
the loose and unsandalled vagaries of the French 



104 JOHN P. HALE. 

Revolution, not the wild passions of communism 
or satis cullottism, but the fundamental maxims 
which had found expression in Magna Charta, the 
petition of right, the execution of Charles Stuart, 
the deposition of James, and the bringing over of 
the Prince of Orange, the writ of habeas corpus, 
and the trial by jury, the great landmarks and 
muniments of English liberty, guarded and regu- 
lated by law. These were his ideals, the stern 
leaders of political thought and action in the days 
of the Commonwealth and of antiquity. 

He surpassed all the men I have known in love 
of Nature in all her varying scenes and moods. 
His soul was open to every divine influence. He 
was the friend and familiar of birds and flowers, 
mountains, trees, and streams. Never was there a 
more enraptured lover of natural scenery; none 
who from the hilltops more lovingly drank in the 
clouds and the landscapes, the song of the stream- 
let, the kindling star, the full glory of the noontide 
sun. What a reverent observer and worshipper of 
nature he was! His eye kindled and his bosom 
swelled as he beheld the pillars of the forest, the 
arches of the sky, the gray cliffs and shadowy 
cones of the mountains, and listened to the roll of 
the unresting and unsearchable sea. Every spot 
about his home was familiar ground to him, and 
his friends, one by one, under his lead, had to climb 
to the top of every mountain and hill within its 
horizon. He loved New Hampshire, and every 
hour he was absent from it in the public service his 
heart was still " in the highlands." His familiarity 
with natural, local, and family history gave an 



JOHN P. HALE. 105 

uncommon charm to his easy conversational pow- 
ers, and made his companionship delightful. 

How can those who lived on terms of intimacy 
with Mr. Hah 1 convey to others any adequate im- 
pression of the attractive human traits that shone 
out in his daily intercourse? Those who knew him 
in his prime, and before sickness had rusted the 
Damascus blade, dearly remember his easy acces- 
sibility, his hospitable mind, his apposite stories, 
and his rich fund of wit and anecdote. He was not 
simply loftily interested in mankind, but his heart 
Avent out to every man, woman, and child in the 
concrete. How well his townsmen knew this, and 
how heartily they loved and admired him for his 
unaffected interest in their personal welfare, their 
health, their children, their business, their pleasures, 
their plans, and hopes, and fears. In early life his 
mind had been promoted, but his heart never rose 
above the ranks. He had a warm sympathy with 
humanity in all its phases — 

" No fetter but galled his wrist, 
No wrong that was not his own." 

He was a faithful friend, and assisted those he 
thought deserving, or who managed to ingratiate 
themselves into his confidence or his sympathies. 
Not infrequently he was the dupe of the designing, 
but such mistakes never chilled his philanthropy, 
nor closed his purse or his heart against the appeal 
of distress, whether genuine or counterfeit. 

At home, as at Washington, he was the un- 
boiiffht counsel and defender of innocence, and no 

© r 

calculating spirit was ever the mainspring of his 



101) JOHN P. HALE. ' 

action. Milton had a forecast of his character 
when he wrote of Bradshaw, — " If the cause of 
the oppressed was to be defended, if the favor or 
the violence of the great was to be withstood, it 
was impossible in that case to find an advocate 
more intrepid or more eloquent, whom no threats, 
no terrors, and no rewards could seduce from the 
plain path of rectitude." 

Such a man could gain but little of this world's 
possessions. He cared less for what he should 
leave than for what he should take with him; and 
he held unaltered to the end this noble conception 
of the use and duty of life, its consecration to 
helpful service for mankind, and for the poor, and 
weak, and oppressed, above all others. 

In the still more intimate privacies of his own 
home he was the endeared centre of a family circle 
to which he was devotedly attached throughout a 
stormy and exciting political career, whose stead- 
fast love supported, and whose tenderness soothed 
him to the last. In him the sentiment of home and 
family was strong and beautiful. How pleasant he 
was in that circle! All admitted there felt the 
sweetness of his temper, the easy gentleness of his 
manners, and the charm of his society. He told a 
story with a grace snatched beyond the reach of 
art, and never one anywhere that would sully the 
tongue or the imagination of a maiden. Who that 
knew him there can ever forget his perfect natural- 
ness, his frankness and sociability, his womanly 
tenderness, his delicacy of speech and conduct, his 
play fulness, his absent-mindedness, his childlike 
simplicities and whimsical oddities, coming out in 



JOHN P. HALE. 107 

his liking for old ways and old places, and for this 
or that bizarre article of food, or drink, or raiment? 
Beautifully does the admirer already quoted say, 
" These are some of the traits which made us often 
forget in the man and the friend even that public 
record of patriotism and services for humanity 
which places him first in the proud roll of the dis- 
tinguished sons of 'New Hampshire." 

Such was the man who so bore his great com- 
mission in his look, and so nobly filled the ideal of 
a knight-errant of liberty that Marshall P. Wilder 
most appropriately introduced him at the New 
Hampshire festival in Boston in 1854 as " the 
very embodiment and incarnation of human free- 
dom," — the man in whom the microscopic power 
of slander could find no spot of impurity, and who, 
God be thanked for such a statesman in the nine- 
teenth century, — 

" Through all the tract of years 
Wore the white flower of a blameless life." 

There is no exaggeration in this description of 
Mr. Hale. I know it is the voice of affection, and 
of a domestic grief not yet entirely assuaged. — 

" Ars utinam mores animumqne effingere potest. 
Pulchrior in terris nulla tabella foret." 

It would be unworthy the occasion, the theme, 
the audience, to sketch the character of Mr. Hale 
in any other spirit or colors than those of truth and 
discrimination; and yet, in delineating him, some- 
thing must be yielded to the partiality of private 
friendship. God forbid that we should ever fail 



10S JOHN P. HALE. 

to dwell on the virtues of our friends, and throw 
the mantle of charity over their frailties. Although 
none could know him truly without a warm admira- 
tion for his noble character, I know how valueless is 
mere indiscriminate panegyric, jS~o character is 
flawless, and like other men Mr. Hale had his limi- 
tations. Nor do I mean to deny the proper meed 
of praise to the other great actors of his time, — 

" Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona 
Multi." 

Most of these are now passed away, and there is 
no reason for restraint, but we may speak with 
posthumous frankness. Undeniably the historians 
of the period have not ascribed to John P. Hale 
that part in the things accomplished in his time to 
which he is really entitled. " On Kansas soil,'" 
says ex-Gov. Robinson in his recent book, " was 
gained the first decisive victory against the Slave 
Power of this nation." Not so. More than ten years 
before the Kansas conflict, the first strong outwork 
of slavery was carried in no insignificant battle, and 
John P. Hale, its leader, became the first anti-slav- 
ery senator, — not by accident, but by the might of 
his own invincible arm and indomitable heart, in a 
hand-to-hand struggle in a state that up to that 
gallant fight had been the very citadel of South- 
ern slavery. Yet this fact has been persistently 
ignored, his name and fame have been treated with 
a studied neglect, and those who came in at a later 
day, some even at the eleventh hour, have suc- 
ceeded in reaping the glory and the reward of the 
movement to which he gave the first impulse and 



JOHN P. HALE. 109 

impetus. I distinctly insist that he it was who won 
the first political success, and who has a valid his- 
torical claim to pioneership in the great uprising 
which terminated slavery. Doubtless its doom was 
written in the book of fate ; doubtless others would 
have come and set the ball in motion ; but certainly 
he did come, and it is as unreasonable and unjust to 
deny to him the credit as to deny to Luther that of 
the Reformation, or to Sam Adams and Franklin 
that of the Revolution. 

The state, among whose lofty mountains freedom 
loves to rear her mighty children, rescues him 
to-day from this neglect, and demands for him the 
recognition of history to which he is entitled, as one 
who early announced and clearly formulated the 
principles upon which the victory was finally won. 
If elsewhere this injustice to a great man is contin- 
ued, it shall not be without protest in New Hamp- 
shire, for we announce by a solemn public act that 
John P. Hale should stand on the pages of history 
foremost among the champions of liberty, to whom 
America owes her emancipation from slavery. 
Neither John P. Hale nor New Hampshire shall be 
shut out hereafter from primacy in the successful 
effort to rescue the republic from the talons of this 
bird of prey. 

And so, with all the ceremony and demonstra- 
tion of respect which the presence of the official 
dignitaries of the state, its culture and its worth, 
can lend to so imposing an occasion — in the pres- 
ence also of official representatives of the two 
cities where Mr. Hale drew his first and his latest 
breath, where he was born and where he had his 



110 JOHN P. HALE. 

home till the last, and in whose soil he was finally 
laid to his rest, whose representatives are most 
appropriately here and commissioned to assist in 
this tribute of honor and of justice to their most 
eminent son and most beloved citizen; in this pres- 
ence and in that of some of the veteran coadjutors 
of Mr. Hale who, at his call, buckled on their armor 
and fought with him the good fight for liberty; in 
the honored presence, also, of some of the renowned 
champions of freedom in the United States, who are 
here to give the dignity and authority of their 
names to this observance — and in the presence of 
that still unbroken family circle that loved him 
most on earth, — we place this great man here in 
the goodly company of Webster and Stark, all 
men of distinct types, differing as the stars differ 
in glory, — the expounder of the constitution, the 
tribune of liberty, and the hero of the Revolution 
on the field of battle. We set up their effigies 
here in token of our reverence for their separate 
and conjoined excellencies of character and achieve- 
ment. 

" It is at the tombs of great men that succeeding 
generations kindle the lamp of patriotism." A 
nation is known by its ideals, and by such memori- 
als as this we realize the continuity as well as the 
immortality of human excellence in the universe. 
The stream of humanity is unbroken. There is no 
real line between the living and the dead. 

" There is 
One great society alone on earth, 
The noble Living and the noble Dead." 



JOHN P. HALE. Ill 

The waves of human life come and go; they 
dash against and sweep away what have been 
esteemed the proudest monuments of human exer- 
tion, but they will not wash away the works that 
have been built up and founded upon the rock of 
human love and fidelity. These will remain when 
not one stone shall be left upon another of the tem- 
ples erected to merely intellectual or military 
renown; and in the expansion of the moral horizon 
that comes to successive generations, posterity 
shall preserve and cherish the memory of every true 
man who has connected his name with some step in 
the progress of the race. 

When the passions and prejudices aroused by the 
contest against slavery shall have died away; when 
we are farther away from the calculating spirit of 
family, and local, and coterie partiality and selfish- 
ness; when the final story of the anti-slavery 
struggle in this country shall be written, among 
those statesmen who wrought for liberty and pro- 
gress in our age of civic and military valor, and 
who transmuted their own God-given energies into 
current coin for the daily use of humanity, no name 
will shine with a purer lustre on the historic page 
than that of John P. Hale. 

I have supposed, and do suppose, that this is the 
true glory and significance of his career, — that this 
is the emphasis of his life and the distinctive mark 
he made upon his time, — that in which the affec- 
tions of posterity are to hold and garner him. 
Without this, without his connection with the great 
movement for emancipation which has glorified our 
age, and given it an unapproachable exaltation in 



112 JOHN P. HALE. 

history, he would be entitled to public honor as a 
good ease lawyer, an eloquent advocate, a useful 
senator, a faithful son, husband, lather, and a 
genial and fascinating friend, — but would scarcely 
be entitled to be commemorated by a statue in the 
public grounds of his state. We give such only 
to great services to humanity, and that political 
freedom to which all nations, though by indirect 
and devious routes, are tending: and such we give 
also, only when time has tested, and set its seal 
upon such services. Such men as John P. Hale 
have an imperishable hold upon the moral world, — 

" Ever their phantoms arise before us, 

Our loftier brothers, but one in blood ; 
At bed and table they lord it o'er us, 

With looks of beauty, and words of good." 

He bore the test of service for liberty at a time 
when such service was the supreme, the inexorable 
demand of the hour. Tried in a time which tested 
men's integrity, men's courage, men's souls, — 
tried as by fire and not found wanting, — he 
fitly stands here as the New Hampshire rep- 
resentative par excellence of the spirit of the 
new era under whose scorching breath slav- 
ery withered up like a scroll, and went down 
to its dishonored grave. The moral courage 
and intrepidity of this man in the lace of that 
public opinion whereby the slave power dominated 
and subjected the North was the forerunner, the 
flaming evangel, of the great uprising of conscience 
in the North, and the harbinger of that martial 
courage which, twenty years later, on a thousand 



JOHN P. HALE. 113 

fields of battle, was to eclipse the highest achieve- 
ments of chivalry and cast romance into the shade. 
This spirit, this dauntless courage and persistency, 
this contempt of martyrdom, ranks him with the 
apostles of liberty in other ages who occupy the 
highest niches in the Pantheon of freedom. 

Mr. Depew says we shall never have a West- 
minster Abbey. Perhaps we never shall, but Amer- 
ica will write on her heart the names of her cham- 
pions of liberty, her heroes in council, and on the 
field of battle. 

You shall find in what I say of this great man no 
political hints or innuendoes. What Mr. Hale did 
Avas for men of all parties. His work contributed to 
the common stock of freedom which all parties 
enjoy and recognize. I am not so unworthy of the 
duty laid on me this day, as to throw into the scale 
of our current politics even the weight of an 
obscure suggestion, in any phrase I may employ to 
express my admiration for Mr. Hale's truth to 
human freedom; and it is the highest tribute our 
generation can pay to his genius and labors, to 
admit that in political philosophy, in recognition of 
universal human brotherhood, all of us begin where 
he left off, and stand on the vantage ground he 
gained for us. 

Mr. Hale's political life was cast in a grand and 
fruitful time. He lived when his country was in 
full health, and occupied with momentous subjects. 
Others there have been whose spirits, like his, were 
in tune with the Divine purpose ; whose eyes, like 
his, from the mountain-top of vision caught the ear- 
liest light of a new day, but who have only seen it 



114 JOHN P. HALE. 

from Pisgah, and died without entering the Prom- 
ised Land. But he was permitted to see the com- 
plete triumph of his principles, and the political 
institutions and policy of his country recast in con- 
formity to those ideas to which he had devoted his 
life. He lived to see the definite extinction of slav- 
ery and all its claims, the release of every function 
in the government from its control. He heard the 
roar of hostile guns settling the great debate in 
which he had borne so early and so prominent a 
part, with voices from which there is no appeal. 
He lived to hear, also, the salvos of victory, and to 
see the land covered over with the glory of freedom 
as with a garment. 

One other security safely locks up his fame. 
" At what a price," says Landor, " would many a 
man purchase the silence of futurity." Surely they 
who need that silence most are those who have 
once had their faces set heavenward, and then have 
faltered and fallen out by the way. The energy and 
exaltation of soul, the uncalculating enthusiasm of 
humanity, which characterize revolutions, are fol- 
lowed by the lowering of tone, the political infidel- 
ity, the eclipse of faith, which succeed them all as 
the night the day. The English revolution which 
dethroned the Stuarts Avas followed by the Restor- 
ation; the French revolution, by Bonapartism and 
a new regime of the Bourbons; Cromwell and 
Hampden, by a more ignoble Charles and the suc- 
cessors of Strafford and Laud; Mirabeau, by Tal- 
leyrand; the overthrow of prerogative by the long- 
ing for thrones and the government of favorites. 

So we, also, after the gigantic struggle to over- 



JOHN P. HALE. 115 

throw the oppression of centuries, live in a time of 
reaction. Wealth has usurped leadership; plutoc- 
racy, and not ideas, rules the hour; and the dry 
bones of the old tyranny crushed thirty years ago 
begin to live. The appeal to be true to the ideas 
of 1860 falls upon deaf ears. We would rather 
sacrifice to the Moloch of money; we rise no 
higher in our contentions than some wrangle about 
the tariff, or the puerility and rascality of determin- 
ing how little of intrinsic value we can palm off 
upon the world for a dollar. 

It was Mr. Hale's high fortune to escape these 
dangers. We have to thank God that there were 
no recantations in his later days ; that he was 
never overtaken by the lassitude of the moral re- 
former, or " the scepticism that treads upon the 
heels of revolutions;" nor yielded to the apostacy 
that clouds the fame and the memory of some 
who had done valiant service for the right. And 
when the great struggle which had opened and 
closed in his lifetime was finished, — when the 
scene upon which he had moved was closed, how 
truly could he say that he had not only fought the 
good fight, but had kept the faith. 

It is altogether fitting, therefore, that the statue 
of such a man, so long conspicuous in the public 
service, holding the highest commission the state 
had to bestow for nearly twenty years, and ever 
upholding her honor and increasing her fame 
before the world, should be erected here, to stand, 
as we trust, for centuries to come, in the grounds 
of its capitol. We thus pay homage to his 
memory in the state of his birth and his abode; 



116 JOHN P. HALE. 

in no provincial spirit, however, but as citizens of a 
larger country, in whose service he exerted all the 
powers of his heart and brain. 

This monumental bronze, its pedestal inscribed 
with some of the great outlines of his life story, 
impressively conveys to the younger generations, 
living in the light and stirring with the sublime 
thoughts of a liberty kindled to a higher glow by 
his torch, the assurance that from his lips the 
accents of freedom always found unfettered utter- 
ance, that we have numbered his labors and entered 
into his spirit, and that more than they can pay of 
gratitude and veneration is due to him for the 
achievements and lessons of his high, and pure, and 
strenuous public life. 

Aye more, we proclaim by this act to-day that 
he deserves to stand in the Valhalla of the National 
Capitol with the sages and worthies whose effigies 
adorn its rotunda, because he was the hero of the 
noblest of our revolutions, — that peaceful revolu- 
tion of ideas in which the seed was sown of the har- 
vest which the soldier's sword came afterwards to 
reap; — which overturned a giant wrong, emancipa- 
ted the master no less than the slave, and gave to 
America that place in the political order to which 
she was destined by Providence; a revolution 
unlike those that have re-organized societies else- 
where, in that in ours there were no crimes and no 
excesses, no Anarchy, no Terror, no Military Des- 
potism, no profanations and no blasphemies, no 
massacres and no proscriptions, to leave their in- 
effaceable stains upon the face of human progress. 

I am quite aware that there is an appointed space 



JOHN P. HALE. 117 

prescribed by usage and good taste, by the cour- 
tesy of the press and the patience of an audience, 
within which what is said here should be circum- 
scribed. That limit was long since passed, and I 
have lingered unduly over the great man and great 
actions I have sought to commemorate. With all 
who knew him in life, I long to-day 

"... For the touch of a vanished hand, 
And the sound of a voice that is still." — 

and, recalling all that he was to friends and coun- 
try, " my heart, penetrated with the remembrance 
of the man, grows liquid as I speak, and I could 
pour it out like water." 

And then, remembering the Protean forms in 
which the foes of liberty are ever appearing, and 
the dangers that beset the republic for which he 
lived and wrought, the vain sorrow and the selfish 
aspiration are alike forgotten, and thinking sadly 
of some crisis of Freedom in future years, and he 
not here to lead on her legions in the bewildering 
fiofht, I bid hail and farewell to this noble son of 
New Hampshire, one of the chiefest jewels in her 
crown of glory. 

" Ah ! if in coming times 
Some giant evil arise, 
And Honor falter and pale, 
His were a name to conjure with ! 
God send his like again !" 



ULYSSES S. GRANT. 



[Speech at a public meeting of citizens at City Hall, Dover, July 26, 
1885. General Grant died July 23, 1885.] 

Mr. President and Fellow Citizens: The intelli- 
gence of the death of our great chieftain and hero, which 
came to us two days ago, was not altogether painful. The 
sympathies of every patriot and friend of humanity had 
gone out to him so long and so fully while he lay upon his 
bed of anguish, that we at last heard of his release from 
the unrest of "life's fitful fever" with a sense of relief, 
almost of gladness. After months of weariness, and pain, 
and wasting disease that no mortal help could stay, the 
most illustrious citizen of our country, and one of the 
most renowned military leaders and patriots of history, has 
departed. He has passed the threshold of another life, 
and the pulses of his mighty heart are at rest. Men now 
living will never see another event of this character — one 
which will excite an interest so wide-spread, may I not 
say, a grief so profound and personal, not only in his own 
land among men of all sections, classes, and parties, but 
also in Europe and throughout the civilized world, wher- 
ever printed speech is known. It would be presumptuous 
for any ordinary person to approach that finished character 
with the hope of adding anything of moment to the inter- 
est which invests it, or to the full tide of sorrow and 
eulogy which is pouring out over the grave of our national 
hero. And yet it is in every sense appropriate that we 
join our voices here to the universal commemoration of his 
virtues, his matchless achievements, his noble character, 



ULYSSES S. GRANT. 119 

his great services to his country, and the patience and for- 
titude and uncomplaining resignation which marked his 
last days, — 

" The statesman — warrior, moderate, resolute, 
Whole in himself, a common good; 
The man of amplest influence, 
Yet clearest of ambitious crime, 
Our greatest, yet with least pretence, 
Great in council and great in war, 
Foremost captain of his time, 
Rich in saving common sense, 
And, as the greatest only are, 
In his simplicity sublime." 

I think it is impossible to study the career of General 
Grant without recognizing in him the most remarkable 
man of modern times. He was a characteristic product of 
our institutions. The main incidents of his life are too 
familiar to need recital. Born to poverty and deprivation 
and toil, he passed thirty-nine years of his life without 
arresting an} T body's attention by striking qualities of any 
kind. He exhibited personal bravery in the Mexican war, 
but no more than many others of his gallant comrades in 
arms. He tired of the army, and tried several kinds of 
business, being rather unsuccessful in them all. At length 
treason struck at the nation's life, and this was his oppor- 
tunity. He sprang with alacrity to the defence of the 
government which had educated him, and displayed at 
once the metal of which he was made. Chance seemed to 
open to him the golden gates of opportunity ; and he it 
was who pierced the black cloud of our national disas- 
ters with the first electric flashes of victory at Belmont, 
Fort Henry, and Fort Donelson. The people recognized 
him, hailed him with acclamations, rallied around him, 
gave him their faith, and from that moment his course was 
onward without faltering, taking no step backward, to the 
high places of the world. He fought the great battles of 
Shiloh, Champion Hill and Vicksburg, Chattanooga and 



120 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

Missionary Ridge, and trampled out the rebellion in the 
West. He then came East, and, taking command of all 
the armies of the Union, displayed all his great qualities, 
his mastery of strategy, and the whole art of war on a 
grand scale. He fought that series of bloody engagements 
in the Wilderness, at Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, and 
Petersburg, and finally, with an invincible tenacity of pur- 
pose, which crushed to powder every obstacle in his path, 
he grappled the rebellion by the throat and strangled it to 
death at Appomattox Court-House. 

It is impossible for many of you younger men, who love 
and admire General Grant in your own way and from your 
own point of view, to enter fully into the feelings which 
the older of us felt for him in the crisis of his country's 
destiny. We who were then in active life, who in the 
army and elsewhere felt the stress and strain and agony 
of that struggle, can vividly recall the faith we then learned 
to repose in General Grant, how we leaned upon his mighty 
arm, how completely we trusted our fate in his hands, 
and how nobly he justified our confidence. You young 
men may think it strange, but it is literally true, that we 
who lived in it can only look back to that period of dark- 
ness and gloom and bloody sweat, and the final sunburst 
of victory which Grant brought us, through tears of love 
and gratitude. And we cannot now doubt that he who 
accomplished the task that had baffled so many others 
was born for the work he did — that Providence raised him 
up, as it has other heroes, patriots, prophets, and martyrs, 
for a special service; that, indeed, he came into the world 
divinely appointed for his work, as Abraham Lincoln was 
for his glorious mission, and together they will be known 
in history — the Emancipator and the Conqueror, — and both 
of them deliverers and saviors of their country. 

It will befit the occasions of more formal and careful 
eulogy, as it will be the august theme of story, to trace 
General Grant's military operations in detail, and define 
with critical discrimination the peculiar characteristics of 



ULYSSES S. GRANT. 121 

his military genius, and his place among great soldiers. 
The time is perhaps not quite come to settle that ; but, 
unless every test of contemporary judgment is delusive, 
there can be no question that he is to rank hereafter with 
the Alexanders, the Haunibals, the Csesars, the Marlbor- 
oughs, the Fredericks, the Napoleons, and the Wellingtons 
of the world. Indeed, a critical study of his campaigns, 
in connection with the traits of his mind and character, 
seems to leave no doubt that, in any arena and any age, he 
could have wrestled on even terms with any of the great 
captains who have graven their names on the tablets of 
history. 

But, aside from what is due to mere military genius, 
who among all kiudred great men is worthy to be named 
along with him? Who of them was so modest, who so 
simple, who so unselfish, who so magnanimous, who so 
truthful and pure, who so thoroughly imbued with civic 
virtue, moderation, self control, and devotion to duty and 
to liberty as he? Not one — not one among all the renowned 
commanders of men. And so he stands unique among 
soldiers — a figure distinctly and clearly cut on the horizon 
of every man's vision — a type by himself — unlike every- 
body else — with an individuality so distinct that no other 
could be mistaken for him — and so answering, as I think, 
one of the supreme tests of human greatness. How readily 
and how freely his superiority was acknowledged by all the 
accomplished men who served with him ; and, yet, what 
generous words he spoke at all times of Sherman, and 
Sheridan, and Thomas, and Hancock, and many another, all 
of whom he loved, and appreciated, and praised. 

As a president of the United States— a chair higher than 
the throne of any king — to which the people, in token of 
their gratitude and trust, bore him again and again on 
their outstretched arms, he was ever true and faithful to 
their interests ; and if, by reason of his military habits of 
life, his inexperience, and his implicit belief in the honesty 
of others, he made some minor mistakes, he was, after all. 



122 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

one of the greatest presidents on the illustrious roll. 
Surely, the president under whose direction the Geneva 
Arbitration was accomplished, and such a transcendent 
step taken towards securing the peace of the world, who 
vetoed the inflation bill and thus kept untarnished the 
financial honor and credit of his country, who inaugurated 
the experiment and laid the foundation stone of the reform 
of the civil service, and under whose firm hand and watch- 
ful eye the first disputed presidential election was quietly, 
and peacefully, and rightly settled, needs no apologetic 
defence, and will never be forgotten as having wreathed 
his brow with a civic chaplet as unfading as his laurels 
gained in war. 

If I do not entirely misconceive his nature, we may add 
that this great man, cast in a heroic mould, gifted with great 
endowments, and born for great destinies, not only con- 
nected his name inseparably with the martial as well as 
with all the great legislative achievements and glories of 
the heroic age of his country, but that he was possessed of 
the rarest of private virtues and most winning personal 
traits, that his habits were mainly pure and sweet, that his 
tastes were simple and healthy, that his manners were 
quiet and unassuming, that he was tender and affectionate 
to his family, loyal and helpful to his friends, free from 
vanity and egotism, and never bitter, but generous and 
charitable and forbearing to opponents; that partisanship 
had not narrowed his mind, nor quenched in him the 
instincts of a broad statesmanship and a broader humanity. 

If I am right in this general, but most hasty and imper- 
fect, estimate of his personality, I think we can readily 
appreciate why the American people were so passionately 
attached to this superb specimen of manhood, and power, 
and achievement, why they so loved and trusted and hon- 
ored him to the end. 

Nor did these qualities fail to win for him their appro- 
priate recognition from the rest of the world. Can you 
ever forget, my friends, his wonderful tour round the 



ULYSSES S. GRANT. 123 

world, the most dramatic and impressive spectacle, it seems 
to me, that ever crowned the personal career of any man in 
ancient or modern times? Wherever he went the kings 
and potentates of the earth uncovered before him, and 
princes, statesmen, and philosophers vied with each other 
in doing homage to his genius, his character, and his 
achievements. His progress around the earth was literally 
a triumphal march. The cities of the Orient and Occident 
alike threw open their gates at his coming, and Europe, 
Asia, Africa, and the islands of the sea crowded the streets 
and roads of the old world to meet and greet him, and lay 
their gifts of admiration at his feet. And yet he never for- 
got for one moment to ascribe all the homage and honor 
lavished upon him to the great country, the great cause, 
and the great people he represented. He moved with the 
same imperturbable dignity and unaffected simplicity in 
the palaces of kings and the glittering courts of emperors — 
he never said an unfitting word or did an unfitting action — 
and came back as simple and unspoiled by flattery, as 
when we sent him forth to show the old world what the 
new could do in the way of producing a man. 

What mutations in human fortune does his career illus- 
trate ! From obscurity lifted not unnaturally to the 
highest eminence on earth — that dizzy height, that goal 
which so many of our ambitious men have longed for and 
sought in vain — at last, when, according to natural laws, 
there should have been twenty years more of peaceful life 
and repose vouchsafed to him, after a heroic battle, borne 
without one articulate murmur of complaint, he yields to 
the Angel of Death, whose dread command not even Ms 
unbending will could turn aside. 

"O iron nerve, to true occasion true, 
O fall'ii at length that tower of strength, 
Which stood four square to all the winds that blew ! " 

As we stand beside his open grave, how vividly we real- 
ize the weakness of our poor human nature, the transitori- 



124 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

ness of earthly glory, the worthlessness of most of the 
prizes of earthly fame and ambition, the majesty of charac- 
ter, the divine beauty and the sure recompense of great 
deeds done in a modest and unselfish spirit. 

All these lessons our people deeply realize. Nor can 
foreign nations fail to draw another lesson from the event; 
that, cold and calculating and factious as we are supposed 
to be, we are still capable of a noble self-abnegation ; we 
forget our differences ; we can obliterate party and sec- 
tional lines, and stand in loving embrace and pour out our 
tears together over the bier of virtue and heroism, all 
hearts melted into sympathy and regret that 

" — renown and grace are no more." 

It is to me one of the most touching and significant 
things in the life of General Grant, that the people whom 
he conquered came to recognize in him their friend and 
saviour, as he was their most magnanimous foe. He broke 
down their military power, and relentlessly reduced them 
to submission and obedience to the law; but, when all was 
over, he was so considerate and helpful that he conquered 
their hearts, and no sincerer mourners will be found at his 
grave than the great body of Confederate soldiers. 

It is a mournful pleasure for us to think over all the gra- 
ciousness of the gift to us of this great man ; bat, alas! 
nothing is left for us to-day but to 

" Render thanks to the Giver, 
And render him to the mould." 



" For the stars on our banner grown suddenly dim 
Let us weep in our darkness, but weep not for him ; 
Not for him, who, departing, left millions in tears ; 
Not for him, who has died full of honors and years ; 
Not for him, who ascended Fame's ladder so high — 
From the round at the top he has stepped to the sky ! " 



ULYSSES S. GRANT. 125 

Not for him — but for his bereaved country, to whom his 
loss at any time would be great and sore — for his afflicted 
family and the whole desolated hearthstone, bereft of his 
sweet affection and ever-tender care. These the American 
people will soothe and cherish as their own ; while Death 
sanctifies and canonizes his great character, locks up his 
fame securely against all further trials of strength and 
weakness alike, and transfers him to our national pantheon 
of heroes and patriots, where he will ever be associated 
with Washington and Lincoln, — all of them ours alone, and 
our precious possessions forever. His immortal spirit has 
joined theirs, and 

" Ne'er to those dwellings, where the mighty rest 
Since their foundations, came a nobler guest ! " 

Soon the august procession will lead forth the pageant 
of his obsequies ; the imperial States of the Republic will 
bear up his funeral pall ; and of the most sad in the pro- 
cession of the bereaved will be the distinguished soldiers of 
the Rebellion, his own illustrious companions-in-arms, and 
the scarred and sunburnt veterans of that Army of the 
Union which his genius had fashioned into such a thunder- 
bolt of war. 

" Let the bell be tolled ; 
And a reverent people behold 
The towering car, the sable steed." 

On every side are utterances of the popular heart. The 
pealing of cannon, the throbbing of bells, the flags at half- 
mast, the closed doors of business, the solemn hush of the 
streets, and the emblems of grief and sorrow that enshroud 
the whole land, tell their own sad story of bereavement 
and loss. 

But amid all this let us not forget that there are precious 
consolations in the last years of our great leader. The vic- 
torious chieftain of his country's armies, and the center of 



12(3 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

his country's hopes, and desires, and prayers, — honored and 
received in other lands as no other man ever was since the 
beginning of time, — the full sheaves of earthly glory, fruits 
of his genius and patriotism, safely gathered in, — after 
drawing near to the gates of death he was drawn back from 
the open door of immortality, and graciously spared to 
learn before tasting of death, how much he was beloved by 
his countrymen, and especially by the Southern people 
whom he vanquished, but to whom he was ever so lenient, 
and kind, and true. And we know by his own words, 
which appear this morning, among the last he ever wrote, 
how the demonstrations of respect which came to him from 
the South touched his heart, and how his mighty spirit 
rejoiced in these evidences of a reunited country. 

But the respite could be but brief, and he yielded at last 
to the great Conqueror of all, and passed to his rest. 

" All is over and done, 
f4ive thanks to the giver, America, 
For thy son." 

Even while his precious dust is still with us, the light- 
nings of heaven are fitly employed in carrying around the 
world the electric currents of a universal sympathy and 
sense of bereavement. In ages to come it will be the tire- 
less theme of history and of song to celebrate his virtues, 
his victories, and his glory. His mortal part is to be laid 
in the centre of the great city he loved so well, and made 
his home, where the sun strikes from the west the high- 
lands of the Hudson, where 

" The sound of those he wrought for. 
And the feet of those he fought for. 
Will echo round his bones forevermore," 

and pilgrims from every land will fare to that illustrious 
tomb, as to a consecrated shrine of patriotism and 
loyalty. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT. 127 

" Peace ! his triumph will be sung, 
By some yet un moulded tongue, 
Far on in summers that we shall not see ; 
Peace, it is a day of pain 
For one about whose patriarchal knee 
Late the little children clung ; 
O Peace, it is a day of pain 

For one upon whose hand, and heart, and brain, 
Once the weight and fate of nations hung. 
Ours the pain, be his the gain ! 
More than is of man's degree 
Must be with us watching here 
At this, our great solemnity. 
Whom we see not we revere, 
We revere, and we refrain 
From talk of battles loud and vain, 
And brawling memories all too free 
For such a wise humility 
As befits a solemn fane ; 
We revere, and while we hear 
The tides of Music's golden sea 
Setting toward eternity, 
Uplifted high in heart and hope are we, 
Until we doubt not that for one so true 
There must be other nobler work to do, 
And Victor he must ever be. 

* * * * 

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ; 
He is gone who seemed so great ; — 
Gone, but nothing can bereave him 
Of the force he made his own 
Being here, and we believe him 
Something far advanced in state, 
And that he wears a truer crown 
Than any wreath that man can weave him. 
But speak no more of his renown, 
Lay your earthly fancies down, 
And in the vast cathedral leave him, 
God accept him, Christ receive him ! " 



At a Banquet given by the Nashua Lincoln Club in honor 
of Gen. Grant's birthday, April 27, 1888, Col. Hall after 
making substantially the foregoing address spoke as follows : 



128 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

"We are now far enough removed from Gen. Grant's 
death to test the enduring and wearing quality of his repu- 
tation. Day by day his renown becomes broader and 
brighter. Every hour adds a stone to the majestic cairn 
which the ages are already building to his memory. 

They talk of the neglect of New York to erect a monu- 
ment adequate to his fame. It matters little, — 

" Nothing can cover his high fame, but Heaven ; 
No pyramids set. off his memories, 
But the eternal substance of his greatness." 

In the " Personal Memoirs " into which for the love of 
his domestic hearth, he wrought his heart-strings in his last 
days — a book so characteristic, so direct and transparent, 
so grand in its simplicity, so pellucid in its style that you 
look through its crystal depths down to the very bottom of 
his mind and heart — the only great work I know of written 
solely to tell the story of a great man's life in the fewest 
and plainest and tersest words, without a thought of liter- 
ary fame — in that book, if no other deed of his remained, 
he has embalmed his name, and he might have written at 
the end 

" Exegi monumentum aere perennius." 

But in a higher sense, his true monument is already 
builded, though its proportions will become larger and 
more majestic as the centuries tide on. That monu- 
ment is the Union which he preserved by his indomitable 
will, his masterful brain, his loyal and liberty-loving soul, 
and the terrible energies of his puissant right arm. 

Mr. President, there is a manifest propriety in the cele- 
bration of the birth of Ulysses S. Grant by a club bearing 
the name of Abraham Lincoln. These two illustrious 
names, names which, as Burke said of Lord Chatham, 
" keep the name of this country respectable in every other 
on the globe," are indissolubly united. They are blended 



ULYSSES S. GRANT. 129 

in a beautiful harmony like the prismatic rays, and so in- 
separable in our memory that we can never think of the 
one without the other. Together in life, we may well be- 
lieve that in death they are not divided — and ours is the 
privilege and happiness to hold them in equal allegiance, 
and love, and reverence. And how fitting it is that an 
association like this of those who think alike concerning; 
the republic, should give a day of commemoration to each; 
that we annually unlock our treasure-house of memory, 
and fondly count over again all the tokens and remem- 
brances, little and great, which we have garnered up, of 
these two greatest men of their age. 

" On God and godlike men we build our trust," and we 
shall be degenerate indeed when we forget to honor these 
precious names, and to think of the graciousness of the gift 
to us of the two characters who stand for so much of the 
glory and luster which gilded the close of the first century 
of our history. 

Nor can we forget that this is a political club, and that 
Gen. Grant was so thoroughly a Republican that every 
honor we pay him here has a political meaning and signifi- 
cance. We are the heirs of his political principles, and in 
the great national contest just at hand, we shall inscribe 
them once more on our banners, and under their guidance 
we will sound the charge and march to victory. It is our 
duty to rescue the government from the clutch of a party 
which is eveiy day making more manifest its profligacy, its 
want of principle, its untrustworthiness and incapacity to 
govern — and to return it to the hands of the men who lost 
it by frauds and outrages upon the suffrage which, unless 
arrested, will, at no distant day, wreck popular government 
in this land. Gen. Grant stood for a renewed and harmo- 
nious nationality, and so do we. He stood for a sound cur- 
rency and honest debt-paying, and so do we. He stood for 
faithful obedience to the Constitution and the laws, and so do 
we. He stood for the protection of our coast-frontier, for the 
rehabilitation of American commerce, and the American 
9 • 



130 ULYSSES S. GKANT. 

navy, and so do we. He stood for a vigorous assertion of 
American rights abroad and for the honor of the flag over 
every inch of land and sea under the whole heaven, and so 
do we. He stood for a true reform of the civil service, and 
its elevation above mere spoils, partisanship, and hypocrisy, 
such as is now smirching its honor and bedraggling it with 
mire ; and so do we. He stood for a loyal and grateful 
recognition of the services and sacrifices of the men who 
saved the American Union on the field of battle and the 
decks of our men of war; and so do we. He stood for the 
protection of American industry, for the preservation of the 
home market to the American producer, and for the main- 
tenance of high wages to the American laborer; and so do 
we. Gen. Grant stood for the emancipated slave, for the 
rights of humanity and American citizenship everywhere, 
for a free and untrammeled and unterrorized ballot, and an 
honest count ; and so do we ; and there, God helping us, 
we will stand forever. These principles will be our watch- 
word in the coming struggle, and whosoever maybe chosen 
for the moment as our standard-bearer, if we are faithful 
to these principles we may look up with serene confidence 
for the benediction of those strong and pure and kindly 
faces of Lincoln and Grant, that look down upon us to-night 
as the spiritual guests of these festivities. 

But our final and highest thought of General Grant 
must always lift us sheer and clear above the denser atmos- 
phere of partisanship into the pure, upper air of reverence 
for the plain, great man, who with the simple feeling of 
obedience to duty did his great work in life, and illustrated, 
as scarcely any other man in history has done, the sure con- 
nection of duty and glory. 

" Not once or twice in our fair story, 
The path of duty was the way to glory : 
He that ever following her commands, 
On with toil of heart, and knees, and hands, 
Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won 
His path upward, and prevailed, 



ULYSSES S. GRANT. 131 

Shall find the toppling crags of duty scaled 

Are close upon the shining table-lands 

To which our God himself is moon and sun. 

Such was he : his work is done, 

But while the races of mankind endure, 

Let his great example stand 

Colossal, seen of every land, 

And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure ; 

Till in all lands, and thro' all human story, 

The path of duty be the way to glory. 

And let the land whose hearths he saved from shame, 

For many and many an age proclaim, 

At civic revel, and pomp and game, 

And when the long-illumined cities flame, 

Their ever loyal iron leader's fame, 

With honor, honor, honor, honor to him, 

Eternal honor to his name." 



JOHN B. GOUGH. 



[Delivered at the City Hall, Dover, N. H., April 11, 1886.] 

Ladies and Gentlemen : — John B. Gough died seven 
weeks ago, and I have thought it somewhat remarkable, as 
perhaps you have also, that no more has been already done 
and said to mark and point the moral of so important and 
noteworthy an event. It would be a strange neglect, in- 
deed, if a society like the Woman's Christian Temperance 
Union, and all kindred societies, should not gather about 
the bier of this extraordinary man, and call the world to 
witness, by fitting words of commemoration, that the great- 
est champion of their cause lies dead, "dead on the field of 
honor." 

I gladly join in the honors of this memorial service, 
which ought to be coextensive with the race which he did 
so much to help and to save. Others have spoken and will 
speak of his Christian virtues, and other aspects of his strik- 
ing career, which was fully closed on the 18th of February 
last. In the few minutes allotted to me here, it is only my 
duty to briefly touch upon the incidents of his remarkable 
life, and sketch the outlines of his magnificent work in the 
cause of temperance. 

John B. Gough was an Englishman by birth, and born 
at Sandgate, England, on the 22d of August, 1817, of hum- 
ble parentage. His father was a soldier in the British 
army, and his mother was for twenty years the schoolmis- 
tress in the little village where they resided. Though very 
poor, he must have had some educational advantages, for 
at the age of eight years he was a remarkably good reader. 
When he was but twelve vears old his father decided to 



JOHN B. GOUGH. 133 

send him to America with a family of immigrants, that 
he might here learn a trade and establish himself in 
life. The family settled on a farm in Oneida County, N. 
Y., and he remained with them two years. In 1831, when 
he was fourteen years of age, he went to the city of New 
York, to learn a trade. Meantime he had become a mem- 
ber of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and soon after 
reaching New York he found work in the Methodist Epis- 
copal Book Concern, as an errand boy and apprentice to 
the trade of book-binding. He became a skilful workman, 
and. in 1833, sent for his mother and sister to join him. 
They came over, but in 1834 his mother died of apoplexy, 
and soon after — at 17 years of age — being thrown upon his 
own resources, young Gough commenced that career of 
dissipation which came so near wrecking him wholly, and 
which in his lectures on temperance he has described with 
such terrible vividness. His power as a mimic and story- 
teller made him a favorite with young men about town who 
were prone to dissipation, and he gave way to the tempta- 
tions which beset the young in such a city. He became an 
inebriate, and sank so low that even the evil companions 
who had enticed him into such courses forsook him. Des- 
titution and drink were then his lot for several years. 
From 1831 to 1842— while he was 17 to 25 years old— he 
went from place to place, sometimes appearing on the stage 
as a comic singer or low comedian, sometimes working at 
his trade, but ever sinking lower and lower into the depths 
of intemperance. In 1838 he went on a fishing cruise from 
Newbury port, and on his return there he married, and did 
well for a time, but relapsed: his passion for drink pre- 
vailed, and he became a confirmed drunkard. At about 
this time he came near being burned to death in his own 
bed, which, in his drunken carelessness, he had set on fire. 
He battled bravely with his appetite, but it was too strong 
for him. At length delirium tremens came, his wife died, 
and at last he seemed to be without a friend in the world. 
Driven to desperation, he drank more than ever, and he 



134 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

frequented the lowest groggeries, telling funny stories and 
singing comic songs to amuse the loafers, who paid him for 
his buffoonery in brandy. Mr. Gough made this account 
of his life — the horrible years between the ages of 17 and 
25 — the most terrible picture ever painted in words and 
gestures before an audience. 

But a merciful Providence had reserved him for another 
destiny, and he was rescued by the Washingtonian move- 
ment. One Sunday evening, in October, 1842, while walking 
in the streets of Worcester, Mass., miserable and hopeless, he 
felt a tap on the shoulder. He turned, and met the kindly 
face of Mr. Joel Stratton, an utter stranger to him, who 
asked him to go to a temperance meeting, the next night, 
and sign the pledge. He promised to go, and went, and 
signed ; and this was the turning-point in his life. Another 
attack of delirium tremens followed, nearly costing him his 
life. But he recovered and kept the pledge five months, 
when he fell, but soon recovered again, and from that time 
forward was a thorough temperance man. 

He immediately commenced that career as a temperance 
lecturer which continued till the day of his death, a period 
of nearly 44 years. I have an impression that Dover was 
one of the early places he visited — but, at any rate, he spoke 
here many times in the course of his life — and many who 
hear me have listened to him again and again. He was 
everywhere in demand as a temperance lecturer, and in the 
first year of his labors he travelled 7,000 miles, delivered 
400 addresses, and obtained 1,500 signatures to the pledge. 
In the two years succeeding his reformation, he travelled 
12,000 miles, delivered 600 lectures, and obtained 32,000 
signatures to the pledge. Thus he traversed this country 
for ten years, addressing vast audiences everywhere, and 
stirring them as no human speech had ever stirred them 
before. 

The fame of his extraordinary talents reached England 
and he visited that country, first in 1853, and again in 1878, 
where he was warmly welcomed and heard with eagerness 



JOHN B. GOUGH. 135 

by all classes of society, and thousands of drunkards were 
reclaimed by his efforts. He delivered 100 orations in Lon- 
don, and spoke to multitudes in all the great towns of the 
United Kingdom, his eloquence charming all classes, and 
his meetings were attended by the elite of English society, 
men of rank esteeming it an honor to preside at them. He 
has probably been heard by more human beings than any 
other speaker of his time, having travelled a half million of 
miles and delivered 8,000 lectures. He very early began to 
speak on other subjects, but was never, I think, so great 
elsewhere, and, indeed, it may be said, he never spoke with- 
out putting in an effective word for the great cause to 
which he devoted his life. On the lyceum platform he de- 
livered many lectures on literary, social, and religious top- 
ics, and won and held preeminent rank among the popular 
orators of his time. His income from his work at length 
became very large. He married the wife who now survives 
him in Worcester, in 1843, and made for himself a beauti- 
ful home in Boylston, about four miles from Worcester, 
where he had 240 acres of land beautifully laid out, and all 
in thorough cultivation, and adorned with taste and cul- 
ture. Here he spent his summers, while he lectured in 
winter. He was generous in his benefactions, and devoted 
much of his wealth to good works of every kind. His char- 
ities were large and unostentatious, and few men have done 
more good in their day in the ordinary ways of daily life 
than John B. Go ugh. 

I have neither time nor ability to fully describe Mr. 
Gough, and analyze his character as an orator. To speak 
with literal truth, he was an oratorical wonder. Without 
an imposing presence, without any pretensions to learn- 
ing or great logical powers, he was a consummate master 
of human speech — an actor — an impersonator — and pre- 
sented his argument with such ready flow of language, 
with such dramatic force, such inimitable mimicry, with 
such pathos and humor, and all suffused with such 
vivid coloring and penetrated with such moral ear- 



136 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

nestness, that all classes were entranced, and hung 
upon his accents with delight. Did anybody ever hear 
another such story-teller as he was? His wide expe- 
rience had furnished him with a great fund of anecdote, 
which he employed with never-failing effect, and illustra- 
ted with impersonations of character of the most lifelike 
accuracy. He could be anything that he chose to be — as- 
suming at will the rollicking Irishman, the phlegmatic 
Dutchman, the frivolous Frenchman, the dialect Yankee, 
the austere Scotch deacon, the coxcomb, the plantation ne- 
gro, the brutal husband, the heart-broken wife, the toper in 
every stage. Often grotesque, he was never coarse, or im- 
pure, or irreverent, in speech or action. No word ever fell 
from his lips that could offend the most fastidious taste. 
But there was character in every lineament of his face, 
every movement of his hand, every tone of his voice. 
Some one has aptly said that there was more expression in 
Gough's coat-tails than in most men's features. How often 
vast audiences have been excited to uncontrollable bursts 
of laughter by his ludicrous presentations, and at the next 
moment melted to tears by his pathetic pictures of the 
horrors of the drunkard's imagination, and the sufferings of 
the drunkard and his famity. It seems to me no man ever 
amused, and, at the same time rescued and uplifted, so 
many people. He was a speaker of most peculiar type 
— and Nature must have broken the die in moulding: him. 
I heard him first in the old Broadway Tabernacle, in 
New York, whose walls, now crumbled to dust these many 
years, resounded to the highest eloquence that has been 
heard in our land. It was the time of the great awakening 
in this countrv. "-Uncle Tom's Cabin " had let the light 
in upon the terrible institution of slavey, and men and 
women were beginning to see as never before the horrors 
of the prison house of men and women and children at 
their very doors. It was my fortune to be a young man in 
those days, and it seems to me that it was a rare good for- 
tune. I think a young man ought to be thankful when his 



JOHN B. GOUGH. 137 

lot is cast in a time pulsating with great events — when 
thought is stirring — when people are opening their minds 
to new truths — when old abuses are passing away — when 
momentous changes are in the air, and when great orators, 
born always of such ferments, come forward and pour out 
their inspired accents and impassioned thoughts upon the 
ears of the world. That was emphatically a time of that 
kind — and whatever I have had of high enthusiasm, of as- 
pirations for a higher good for myself, for my country, and 
mankind, I date back for their kindling and growth to that 
time. I heard then, in New York, nearly all the great 
public speakers of that day, as they hurled their burning 
and scorching denunciations upon the Moloch of human 
slavery. I heard, in one day, in 1855, at the May anniver- 
sary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, in the old Met- 
ropolitan Theatre, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garri- 
son, Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker, and Henry Ward 
Beecher. These were the princes of the blood of the Amer- 
ican platform — and all of them, just then, at their very 
best. At about the same time I first heard John B. Gough, 
on a theme not less grand, and not less inspiring than Anti- 
Slavery, the theme of Temperance ; and never did I hear 
such eloquence, before or since. Inferior to all the great 
orators I have just mentioned, in some respects, yet in dra- 
matic power, the lurid light which he threw upon his can- 
vas as he painted the emotions, the feelings, the miseries of 
the victims of appetite, in aptness of anecdote and illustra- 
tion, in pathos, and humor, and perfect control over the 
passions of his hearers, he was far superior to them all. I 
heard him with delight, and I never afterwards missed an 
opportunity to hear him again — even down to the last time, 
when he spoke in this hall, about a year ago — when it was 
clear to me that his powers were waning — that the light of 
his genius was flickering — 

" For age will rust the brightest blade, 
And Time will break the stoutest bow." 



138 JOHN B. GOTTGH. 

But the fire of John B. Gough was still there — smoulder- 
ing — and occasionally burst forth in all its pristine splen- 
dor. 

We talk, in our vanity, of the triumphs of oratory and 
eloquence, of the achievements of intellect and genius, but 
these are trifles. They are something — they are sought after 
with feverish anxiety, but they are bubbles, they are drops, 
they are less than dust in the balance, when compared with 
the glory of a sublime moral purpose, informing, animating 
and enthusing the whole man. The true beauty and the les- 
son of John B. Gough's life was that he consecrated his mar- 
vellous gifts to the redemption of the race from the thraldom 
of evil habit, and the moral elevation of his fellow-men to that 
comfort, that plenty, that happiness, that dignity, that self- 
respect, that tranquility of mind, which he knew would fol- 
low their emancipation from the slavery of intemperance. 
It is in this character that he did his great work, and al- 
though he achieved an enduring fame in other fields, lie 
never seemed quite at home unless he was hurling the shin- 
ing weapons of his wit, his pathos, his invective, his appeal, 
squarely in the face of the demon of evil habit. That he 
wrought out greater results for temperance than any other 
man who ever trod a platform, reclaimed more men from 
drunkenness, and brought happiness to more desolate 
homes, is certain. Not in vain did he travel 500,000 miles, 
nor were his words thrown away upon the eight million 
people who heard him. A poor woman in Edinburgh, in 
giving him a handkerchief, said : k ' When he wipes the sweat 
from his brow, in speaking, tell him to remember he has 
wiped away a great many tears, while in Edinburgh." That 
tells the story, and he so wrought for forty-four years. 
Who can tell how many he plucked from the burning, and 
how many he was the means of saving from want and mis- 
ery ? What a noble life ! How awfully begun, but how 
gloriously ended. For he was faithful to the very end, and 
died, literally in harness, as he would have wished. On 
Monday evening, February 15th, he was lecturing in Phil- 



JOHN B. GOUGH. 139' 

adelphia, and had spoken for half an hour with his accus- 
tomed vigor and eloquence, when his head dropped upon 
his breast, he fell prostrate to the floor, and remained in an 
unconscious condition till the end came, three days after. 
He had been stricken with paralysis of the tongue — he had 
literally worn out his vocal organs in speaking for the good 
of his fellow-men. His last words on the platform were : 
" Young man, make your record clean." How strangely 
significant, and how strangely in keeping with that elo- 
quent, warning voice, which had rung like a clarion in the 
ears of millions in the United States and Great Britain for 
forty-four years of his knightly crusade in behalf of total 
abstinence. For this we honor him chiefly to-day. For 
this he was mourned by multitudes of men whom he had 
redeemed. For this let the memory be held sacred in all 
future time of the great evangel of temperance to England 
and America. 

During the past year, in our country, several great and 
illustrious men have been borne to the grave with all the 
pomp and pageantry of national grief. No such observan- 
ces waited upon the quiet sepulture of the great apostle of 
temperance, at his own beautiful "Hillside." And yet, it 
is doubtful if even the most renowned of our national he- 
roes has done more good in his day and generation, or con- 
ferred more lasting blessings upon humanity than John B. 
Gough. So will it be doubtless, till the end of man's pil- 
grimage upon earth — our greatest benefactors will be too 
lightly esteemed, and we shall never, till the millenial day, 
hold the victories of peace as high as the victories of war. 



DANIEL M. CHRISTIE. 



[Remarks addressed to the Supreme Court of New Hampshire, at the 
trial term, February, 1877, at Dover.] 

May it please your Honor: — I rise to formally 
announce an event, the unwelcome intelligence of which 
has already come to the court by common report. The 
Hon. Daniel M. Christie, the most distinguished mem- 
ber of this bar, and the most eminent counsellor of 
this court, departed this life, at his residence in this 
city, on the 8th day of December last, at the advanced 
age of 86 years. His brethren of the bar of Straf- 
ford county, whose leader and ornament and pride 
he was for so many years, profoundly impressed by this 
event, and desiring to do whatever is in their power to 
acknowledge the supremacy, illustrate the virtues, and 
honor the memory of this great man, have, with entire 
unanimity, adopted resolutions expressive of the high sense 
entertained by the bar of the eminent character and ser- 
vices of Mr. Christie, and their sincere sympathy and con- 
dolence with those friends whom his loss affected more 
nearly; and have, with a partiality which I gratefully 
acknowledge, imposed upon me the honorable duty of pre- 
senting them to the court. In the performance of that 
duty, I will, by leave of the court, read the resolutions 
which have been adopted by the bar, and respectfully move 
that they be entered upon the records of the court : 

Resolved, That we have heard with profound sensibility of the death 
of the Hon. Daniel M. Christie, the oldest and most distinguished 
member of this bar, who has, by a long life of arduous labor, fidelity 
to duty, and spotless integrity in every relation of life, adorned and 
elevated the profession of the law, and imparted dignity and luster to 
the jurisprudence of our state. 



DANIEL M. CHRISTIE. 141 

Resolved, That in the long, honorable, and conspicuous career of Mr. 
Christie — chiefly as a counsellor and advocate at this bar — distin- 
guished by great learning, sound judgment, unwearied industry, and 
unsurpassed fidelity to every personal and professional obligation, we 
recognize those qualities which entitled him to the respect and venera- 
tion which were universally entertained for him ; and that, by his wis- 
dom, prudence, and conscientious attention to all the duties of good 
citizenship, he exerted a great and salutary influence upon the com- 
munity in which he lived. 

Resolved, That we take pride in recording our high estimate of his 
extraordinary intellectual endowments, his exalted principles, and ele- 
vated standard of private and professional morality, and commend his 
virtues and excellences of character to the imitation of the members 
of the profession which he pursued with such assiduity, and such 
remarkable honor and success. 

Resolved, That we deeply sympathize with the family of Mr. Christie 
in the bereavement which has deprived them of an indulgent father 
and faithful friend, and respectfully offer them such consolation as 
may be found in the heartfelt condolence of the bar, whose leader and 
exemplar he was for nearly fifty years, and whose affection and vener- 
ation he had gained by his preeminent abilitiesand blameless life. 

Resolved, That the secretary communicate a copy of these resolu- 
tions to the family of Mr. Christie, and that the committee present 
them to the court now in session in this county, with the request of 
the bar that they be entered upon its records. 

May it please your Honor: — I should be doing 
injustice to my own feelings on this occasion, if I were to 
refrain from adding a few words at least to the expressions 
of grief and sensibility which these resolutions contain. 

This, of all places in the world, could our deceased elder 
brother have selected the scene, would he have chosen 
for pronouncing above his grave whatever of honorable 
praise he had earned by a life of high exertion in an exalted 
profession, of incorruptible fidelity to every trust, and 
unsullied honor in all the relations of life. And here, cer- 
tainly, in this building whose walls will be forever associ- 
ated with his name and his labors, it is appropriate that 
such honors as the living can pay to the dead should not 
be denied to him. Others there are, older than myself, and 
whose opportunities of observation have extended over a 



142 DANIEL M. CHRISTIE. 

larger period than mine, who can better inform the court 
of the varied incidents of his long and useful life, and to 
their hands I shall mainly leave the task, contenting myself 
with a brief outline of his professional career, and some 
imperfect estimate of his powers and standing among the 
lawyers of his time. 

Mr. Christie was born at Antrim, N. H., on the 15th of 
October, 1790. He had no adventitious aids in youth. 
He labored on a farm in his earlier years, and, without 
wealth, or powerful friends, or patronage to lean upon, 
after surmounting the obstacles usually encountered by 
farmers' sons in our agricultural towns, he entered Dart- 
mouth college, and was graduated there in 1815, at the 
head of a class of men of eminence, of which he was the 
last surviving member. He studied law three years in the 
office of James Walker, of Peterborough, began the practice 
in York, Me., practised there and at South Berwick till 1823, 
when he removed to this city, where he ever after resided. 
He entered upon professional practice here with character- 
istic energy, pursued it with singular zeal and assiduity, 
and rapidly rose in the estimation of the bench, the bar, and 
the public. He was a contemporary of Jeremiah Mason, 
Jeremiah Smith, Daniel Webster, Ichabod Bartlett, and 
George Sullivan — being about twenty-five years the junior 
of Smith and Mason, and but few years younger than the 
others. In the early years of his professional life those 
great men not infrequently appeared in the trial of causes 
in this county, and the old court house still stands here 
among us which witnessed the stirring struggles of these 
intellectual gladiators and whose walls resounded to the 
voices of their eloquence. With these high examples 
before him, and these high rivalries and contentions to 
stimulate him, he "must," in the language of Mr. Webster, 
" have been unintelligent indeed not to have learned some- 
thing from the constant displays of that power which he had 
so much occasion to see and to feel." That he did learn 
much from that great intercourse and contention of kin- 



DANIEL M. CHRISTIE. 143 

dred minds — the trophies of Miltiades disturbing his sleep 
— there is abundant evidence in the rapid and sure strides, 
no step backward, with which he came up and forward, 
even among such rivals, to a high professional eminence. 
There are many proofs of the high respect with which all 
these great men, whose marvelous powers gave dignity and 
luster to the bar of New Hampshire in its golden age, 
regarded him and his attainments. He continued in the 
full practice of the law here for about fifty years, engaged 
in nearly every important case tried in this county up to 
the year 1870 — many years after the great luminaries 
of the law — the contemporaries of his early professional 
life — had sunk below the horizon. 

He had but little relish for public life, and never sought 
political office, although he had political principles and 
convictions of the most decided character and took a deep 
and lively interest in all great public questions. He was, 
however, elected to the legislature as early as 1826, and 
during the next forty years he was returned to that body, 
from the town and city of Dover, on eleven different occa- 
sions. This was about the entire extent of his holding 
public office. But, since he never refused the summons of 
the public to any duty, and was more than once a candi- 
date for high stations, it may perhaps fairly be said that his 
exclusion from the higher walks of official life was mainly 
due to the fact that during nearly his whole life he was not 
in accord with the political sentiments which controlled the 
state in which he lived. Many regrets have been expressed 
that the doors of preferment were thus closed upon a man 
who, serving his country in any conspicuous sphere, would 
have advanced its honor, promoted its prosperity, elevated 
its dignity, enlightened its mind, purified its morality, and 
lifted its policy to a higher plane of statesmanship. But 
certain I am that this enforced exclusion from the councils 
of the nation cost Mr. Christie no pangs of regret, and 
that never for one moment did it occur to him to secure 
that recognition which his great abilities merited by any 



144 DANIEL M. CHRISTIE. 

subserviency to sentiments and methods which his reason 
and conscience did not accept. It was ever his aim — never 
forgotten — and his rule — never violated — to preserve his 
personal rectitude, as the richest treasure any man can 
possess. 

It would seem to be superfluous to speak of the intellect- 
ual greatness of Mr. Christie before a tribunal which has 
been so often charmed and enlightened by the displays of his 
power. But, unfortunately, so modest was the great man 
whose loss we now deplore, so reserved, so careless of his 
achievements and fame, so content with circumscribing his 
professional employments almost within the limits of the 
small county in which he dwelt, and never, that I am aware 
of, going beyond his own state in a professional capacity, and 
so fleeting indeed are the records and impressions of the 
nisi prius trials in which he principally gathered in his 
fame, so transitory even the remembrances of these con- 
flicts and struggles which so rapidly pass out of contempo- 
rary memory and are gone forever, that it would seem 
desirable, if it might be, for the court and the bar to 
place on record somewhere some suitable memorial of the 
intellectual power of such a man as Mr. Christie. — some- 
thing which might rescue some of his striking traits of 
character from the oblivion that soon shrouds the fame of 
the practising lawyer, and inform the future generations of 
our people, and especially his successors at the bar, that a 
great man has fallen here and now. I trust, therefore, that 
your honor, and my brothers of the bar who are to follow 
me in this tribute of respect to his memory, will commem- 
orate his remarkable gifts and services in language of 
enduring and permanent value, leaviug " something so 
written to after times, as they should not willingly let it 
die/' 

Mr. Christie did not reach his ultimate greatness, as some 
men do, at a bound, but his was a steady growth, and labo- 
rious ascent to the tablelands of the law. Through a long 
series of arduous exertions he "ever great and greater 



DANIEL M. CHRISTIE. 145 

grew," until for years before his death I think the front 
rank and the leadership — primus inter primos — of the front 
rank in the profession of the law was accorded to him by 
the universal voice of the profession and the bench in New 
Hampshire. So various and so large were his powers and 
his attainments, that it is difficult to make a critical analy- 
sis or estimate of his capacity. Mr. Webster said the char- 
acteristics of Mr. Mason's mind were real greatness, 
strength, and sagacity. I have often thought this concise 
summary to be equally true of and applicable to Mr. Chris- 
tie. He was certainly a man of extraordinary endowments, 
and these had been wonderfully cultivated, improved, 
invigorated, and strengthened by the untiring industry of 
a long life given to the law, with a singleness of heart and 
purpose which disarmed the jealousy of that proverbially 
jealous mistress. He had prodigious industry, and could 
work terribly. He had indomitable will and tenacity of 
purpose. He had good sense and sound judgment. He 
had a vast and exact memory. He had a logical and capa- 
cious understanding. In volume of intellect, in ability to 
grasp a legal proposition, or grapple with a problem or an 
argument, in pure and simple brain power, he certainly 
had no superior if any equal in New Hampshire in these 
later years of his life, and I doubt if in the annals of our 
illustrious jurisprudence, or in the list of our great forensic 
names, he was ever surpassed. 

He was not quick of apprehension — he was cautious, 
wary, and slow to advise. He never promoted litigation, 
but often discouraged it by refusing to give any guaran- 
tees of success. He observed the precept of old Polonius, to 

" Beware 
Of entrance to a quarrel ; but, being in, 
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee." 

When once engaged he was laborious to the last degree, 
and never came to the trial of a case without the most thor- 

10 



146 DANIEL M. CHEISTIE. 

ough, painstaking, and exhaustive preparation. He spared 
no time or labor, he turned the night into the day, he 
shrunk from no diligence or exhaustion, he studied his 
cases over and over, and through and through, and looked 
at them in every possible aspect ; and when he came to the 
trial, his thorough understanding of his case, its weakness 
as well as its strength, his anticipation of every possible 
position of his adversary, and his complete devotion to his 
cause and his client, made him the most formidable antag- 
onist any man could encounter. Entering the lists on some 
occasions with some of the leaders of the American bar, 
they found him a foeman worthy of their steel, and in 
the encounters which ensued he was never vanquished. 
Though so apparently timid and hesitating at the outset, 
he had immense combativeness, and used to say that he 
loved the smell of battle. When once launched upon a 
trial, he was a great ship of the line moving into action and 
bearing down, black and frowning, upon his adversary, with 
all sails set, decks cleared, and every gun shotted to the 
muzzle. At such times he was a spectacle of grandeur, 
and I appeal to your honor, and every gentleman of the bar 
who has ever been put to the trying test of being his antag- 
onist, that when he seated himself for the struggle you 
always saluted him with homage, and felt that though he 
might be out-manoeuvered or worsted by dexterity and 
adroitness in avoiding a close encounter, it was a hopeless 
struggle for any adversary who should come within range 
of his terrific broadside. 

Mr. Christie was less eloquent than many men in the 
ordinary acceptation of that term. But as an advocate 
before juries, and before the full bench upon great ques- 
tions, he was, nevertheless, great and almost invincible. 
He had not great readiness, or fullness, or felicity of 
speech, he did not command a very copious vocabulary, 
but he had words enough to express the most vigorous 
thought and the most accurate shades of meaning. 
His great strength lay rather in his skilful presen- 



DANIEL M. CHEISTIE. 147 

tation of strong points, and his logical and sinewy 
argument, — simple, direct, ordinarily unadorned by any 
imagery, and free from any flights of fancy. He took 
no circuitous routes, but pressed straight home to his 
object with a pace so steady and strong and sustained that 
it could not fail to bring him to the goal. He had great 
power of sarcasm and invective, and had a keen sense of 
the ludicrous, which seemed to me to be a late outgrowth 
of his mind, and to grow keener and sharper as he grew 
older. Many anecdotes might be told illustrative of this 
quality, but the bench and the bar remember vividly, I am 
sure, some of his later efforts on occasions of importance, 
when this mighty man would not only lift the court and 
jury and spectators up to his clear and luminous view of 
the law and the justice of his case, but amused and some- 
times convulsed all who heard him by his quaint humor, by 
curious turns of expression, and grotesque comparisons and 
illustrations, of the wit of which he seemed to be sublimely 
unconscious. But he never put himself on parade. These 
were all tributary to the stream of his argument and his 
purpose, and flowed in and along the channel -of his reason 
and logic, like flowers on the bosom of the Mississippi. 

The degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon Mr. 
Christie by his Alma Mater in 1857, and his acknowledged 
eminence as a jurist is abundantly attested by the offer on 
two occasions of the chief-justiceship of the court — a court 
which can boast that a Smith, a Richardson, a Parker, and 
a Perley have occupied its highest seat. But he declined 
judicial station, although none can doubt that he would 
have filled and adorned it with consummate learning, wis- 
dom, and integrity. In fact, from all we know of him, we 
must believe him to have been equal to every possible occa- 
sion a lawyer might be called upon to meet, and I think it 
would be the unanimous opinion of the profession that he 
would have been as great and conspicuous in any forum as 
he was here. 

A glance at him showed him to be no ordinary man. 



148 DANIEL M. CHRISTIE. 

His personal appearance was noble and commanding. His 
imposing dignity, his austere demeanor, "his look, drawing 
audience," his Jove-like head and towering brow, singled 
him out as a king among men. As for nryself, whatever 
the opinion of others may be, I long since concluded that 
my knowledge of other men had furnished me no measur- 
ing lines wherewith to estimate his full intellectual strength 
and power. 

Mr. Christie was bred to the common law, and his 
admiration for that noble science, for its severe methods, 
its intricate reasonings, and for its august uses and capaci- 
ties as a means of determining right and enforcing justice 
in civilized society, was unbounded. For many years pre- 
vious to his death he must have been the greatest living 
expositor among us of the common law of England, which 
Lord Coke called " the perfection of reason." He did not 
take kindly to the modern codes of practice, which, in his 
opinion, degraded the study of the law from a science to a 
trade, the tools of which any rude and untrained hand 
might wield. Nor was he in love any the more with the 
systems of equity, which during the last fifty years have so 
much usurped the province and superseded, whether or not 
they have enlarged, the uses of the common law, and sup- 
planted the forms of procedure which had received the 
sanction of so many generations of great lawyers and 
judges. He seldom resorted to it in practice, and I have 
heard him on more than one occasion express his distrust 
of and impatience with the loose methods of equity proced- 
ure by reference to the well-known saying of Selden, that 
" equity is according to the conscience of him that is chan- 
cellor, and as that is larger or narrower, so is equity. 'Tis 
all one as if they should make the standard for the meas- 
ure we call a foot a chancellor's foot ; what an uncertain 
measure would this be ? One chancellor has a long foot, 
another a short foot, a third an indifferent foot. 'Tis the 
same in the chancellor's conscience." 

Of course it was a necessary and inevitable corollary of 



DANIEL M. CHRISTIE. 149 

such views that he should be conservative, and slow to 
sanction a departure from the settled principles of law and 
decisions of the courts. But although stare decisis was his 
motto, no man was more bold and fearless than he in 
attacking anything which he was profoundly convinced was 
wrong, or unsupported by reason. The certainty of the law 
was to him of inestimable value, but he held firmly to the 
letter and spirit of the maxim of the great judgment in 
Coggs v. Bernard, that " nothing is law that is not 
reason." 

Such a man, so lavishly endowed by nature, so equipped 
by study and reflection, and filling so large a space in the 
public eye, could not fail to impress himself upon the 
judicial history of his time. An examination of our reports 
covering the period of his active professional life, will 
prove that he has left his mark upon those discussions and 
adjudications winch have fashioned the jurisprudence of 
our state, and rounded out the body of law here framed in 
statutes and decisions into harmonious proportions that 
command the respect of the profession and of publicists in 
all parts of America and Europe. 

But any sketch of Mr. Christie's character would be 
imperfect and unjust to his memory which should fail to 
call attention to the high ethical tone of his professional 
life. He was the very embodiment of a high professional 
morality. He had a profound revei^ence for the law, and 
he would as soon have poisoned his neighbor's spring, as 
knowingly corrupt the fountains of justice, two atrocities 
which my Lord Bacon has somewhere, 1 believe, compared 
and likened. The same great philosopher and moralist 
lays it down that " the greatest trust between man and man 
is the trust of giving counsel ;" and the celebrated banis- 
ter, Charles Phillips, said that "the moment counsel 
accepts a brief, every faculty he possesses becomes his 
client's property. It is an implied contract between him 
and the man who trusts him." Mr. Christie fully accepted 
this code of professional obligation, and his surrender of 



150 DANIEL M. CHRISTIE. 

himself and all his powers to his client was as complete and 
absolute as it could be, consistently with the restraints of 
truth and honor. When he accepted his brief, whether the 
case was small or large, his client rich or poor, that client 
knew that he had secured all that there was of him, — his 
large brain, his unrivalled industry, his patience in 
research, his infinite attention to details, and that nothing 
which lay in human power would be spared to insure suc- 
cess. The members of this bar will recall memorable 
instances of this conscientious fidelity to his client and his 
cause, where he expended the energies of a giant upon 
causes of slight importance in which nothing of moment 
was involved. 

He also had a great respect and deference for the bench, 
and was loftily above the meanness of attempting to influ- 
ence the court improperly, or to secure its approval of his 
views by any other means than the soundness of his argu- 
ment and the justice of his cause. No man ever more scru- 
pulously kept the oath, and every part of it, which the 
attorney of the court takes when he assumes the duties of 
his office. 

He employed his efforts and influence to raise and purify 
the character of the profession, " ancient as magistracy and 
necessary as justice;" and no maxim was more insisted 
upon by him than that which " holds every man a debtor 
to his profession, from the which as men of course do seek 
to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to 
endeavor themselves by way of amends to be a help and 
ornament thereunto." I know whereof I speak, because 
personal observation has taught me that he never prosti- 
tuted his great powers to improper or even questionable 
purposes. In those delicate questions of professional duty 
which arise in every extended practice, he gave the doubt 
against his own interest. There were classes of cases, 
especially certain defences, in which, influenced by high 
views of public morality and policy, he invariably refused 
to accept a retainer, without, however, imputing anything 



DANIEL M. CHRISTIE. 151 

improper or unprofessional to others who entertained opin- 
ions and adopted practices less fastidious in that regard. 
Nothing would induce him to appear in any capacity which 
could be construed into an apology for certain offences 
against the law. In this I am aware that he differed toto 
eoelo from other lawyers not less eminent, and not less hon- 
orable, perhaps, than himself — and I only mention it as a 
certain proof of his high and scrupulous character as an 
advocate, and that he thought the duties of good citizen- 
ship were paramount to every personal consideration. He 
believed a lawyer's honor was his brightest jewel, and to be 
kept unsullied, even by the breath of suspicion. He was 
straightforward, honorable, and sincere to the last degree. 
He had no covert or indirect ways. He had no arts but 
manly arts ; and sooner than any man I ever knew would 
I select him as a model to be imitated in this respect. 

There is one thing which, at the risk of being tedious, I 
wish specially to note to-day, and which I feel called upon 
to say in behalf of the many men who have sat at the feet 
of this Gamaliel of the law. In the name of all the gener- 
ations of his students I wish to bear testimony that in the 
relation of master and pupil he was one of the most instruc- 
tive, entertaining, kind, and indulgent men in the world. 
In his office the austerity which he wore in public largely 
disappeared. The bow was unbent, and his treatment of 
his students, without distinction of persons, was marked by 
a uniform high courtesy, respect, and familiar unrestraint. 
He was ever ready to pour out his knowledge, the matured 
fruits of his experience and labor, in copious streams of 
delightful talk and reminiscence, in which he brought back 
vividly before the listener the varied incidents of his long- 
professional career, his contests at the bar, his personal 
recollections of great men, and the circumstances attending 
the settlement, one by one, of the main principles of our 
jurisprudence. At such times, when the springs of his rich 
and inexhaustible memory were unlocked, he would come 
nearer to neglecting business and clients than on any other 



152 DANIEL M. CHRISTIE. 

occasion, as he turned aside to linger with the scenes that 
came trooping from the chambers of the past. No one, I 
venture to say, who has ever enjoyed the rare privilege of 
beiug his pupil, will fail to appreciate and endorse what I 
now say, and to recall some hours thus spent as among the 
most valuable and best of his life. He treated his vounc 
men with a kindly interest, with helpfulness, and indul- 
gence towards weakness, inexperience, and ignorance of 
the law, and followed them through life with an affection- 
ate regard, never hearing any good of them without rejoic- 
ing, nor any ill without sorrow and incredulity. These 
generous offices entitled him, so far as every one of them is 
concerned, to a lasting remembrance of the heart — to a per- 
sonal attachment, admiration, and veneration which never 
failed him in life, and is testified to-day by the sincere 
affection of every man who ever sat at his feet and learned 
of him. 

There was something very remarkable in the manner of 
his teaching. It is one of the distinguishing and certain 
marks of greatness in a man that he is in essential respects 
unlike all other men. I think the acknowledged great 
men of history all respond to this test. Mr. Christie was 
emphatically a man of that stamp. Who was ever like 
him? He was in all respects sui generis. In his personal 
character, his habits of mind, his methods of investigation, 
he was grand, solitary, and peculiar, and his image stands 
out among lawyers as clear and distinct as that of William 
Pinckney, or Jeremiah Mason, or Daniel Webster, or Rufus 
Choate. And in such a powerful manner did he impress 
his characteristics upon his pupils that he may be almost 
said to have been the founder of a school of legal study 
and dialectics, as Socrates was of a philosophy of investi- 
gation, and his was as severe, and rigid, and thorough. 
There have been many, indeed, who looked upon him as 
their intellectual father — many illustrious names who have 
preceded him to the grave, and others who still live to be 
the lights of the bar and the forum. Although he imparted 



DANIEL M. CHRISTIE. 153 

facts and principles with a lavish hand, it was, after all, the 
spirit of his teachings which was of most value to the stu- 
dent. Those of us who are grateful to him, and to the 
influence of his mind and character, as many of us are, for 
what we feel to be best and most valuable in our culture 
and training, are grateful not so much for any direct pre- 
cepts as for that inspiring lift which only genius can sup- 
ply to the faculties. He fecundated all minds that came 
under his sway, and so contagious were his elevated moral- 
ity and his ardor in the pursuit of truth, that any pupil of 
his who should not exhibit some of his characteristics in 
his life and career would indeed be unintelligent or morally 
depraved. 

If I could linger to do so, I might recount Mr. Christie's 
career in other spheres of business, and find in it titles 
quite as high to the honor and respect of the community 
as he won for himself in his chosen profession. He was an 
officer for many years in several of our largest corporations, 
and discharged his responsibilities in that capacity with the 
same high scrupulousness, the same industry, and the same 
conscientious fidelity to his trust which actuated him in 
the law. He impressed all the financial institutions in 
which he had any directory part, for their good, and ours, 
and the good of the community, with the stamp of his own 
sturdy integrity, solidity, and soundness. In fine, upon 
whatever theatre of action he moved, he exhibited a 
grandeur and individuality of character, a high principle 
and nice sense of honor, which made him worthy of the 
imitation of all who are to succeed him in the high places 
of life. He had in a large degree the home-bred virtues of 
his Scotch-Irish ancestry, mingled with much of the spirit 
and flavor of the great men of antiquity — the indomitable 
will — the severe simplicity — the rugged integrity — the 
uncompromising hatred of dishonesty and wrong — the 
genuine contempt for weakness and pretense — the austere 
private virtue — the unconsciousness of great genius. 

In this hasty and imperfect sketch of Mr. Christie's 



154 DANIEL M. CHRISTIE. 

characteristics I have but one thing further to present, and 
I am glad that I am not obliged to close without saying 
this which ought most to endear him to the common men 
and women whom he has left behind him. I am able to 
say from personal knowledge what is confirmed by affec- 
tionate unanimity by his family, that in the home circle he 
was always sweet, kind, considerate, and indulgent. The 
private life of many a man of genius is a domain which 
cannot be entered with safety, or prudence, or delicacy. 
How different it was with Mr. Christie! Here is no for- 
bidden ground — and how thankful to God we are and 
ought to be to-day, that here was one great and famous, 
man, upon every hour and act of whose private life and 
intercourse with friends and family the light of noon-day 
might be turned with microscopic power and find no stain 
or impurity. That he was upright, exemplary, and dec- 
orous before the world, we all know. But he was more. He 
was sound and sweet to the core. He had a singular, 
almost infantile, guilelessness of mind, and cleanness of 
speech and imagination. The inevitable contact with vice 
and depravity which came to him through the varied expe- 
riences of a long life, passed in attending to the concerns of 
others, had left him pure, and innocent, and uncontami- 
nated. He was like "the sun, which passeth through pol- 
lutions and itself remains as pure as before." In this 
respect he was fortunate beyond most men. Suspicion 
never assailed his private life, and slander fled abashed 
from his presence. 

I am not here to say that Mr. Christie was without 
faults. To say that, would be to think and ask others to 
believe him more than human. But they were fewer than 
ordinarily fall to the lot of men, and bore the impress of 
his great faculties, and his life of arduous labor and self- 
dependence. It is a singular fact that while his foibles 
were such as to be apparent to the casual observer, some of 
his virtues were known only to those who knew intimately 
the tenor of his daily life. Those who knew him best most 



DANIEL M. CHRISTIE. 



155 



unreservedly respected and admired him. He took no 
pains to conceal himself. He never courted or flattered the 
people. He cared not for applause — and if he loved and 
sought wealth, he sought it by no unworthy means, and 
lived and died with clean hands. 

As I recall his last days I cannot fail to recognize how 
fitting and satisfactory was the manner of his death. He 
had laid off the harness of his busy professional life, and 
sat down in the evening of his days by his own fireside, in 
the sacred seclusion of that family circle of whose social 
affections he was the endeared and venerated centre. But 
the great mind could not be inactive, and he turned with 
delight from " the gladsome light of jurisprudence " to 
some of the enchanting English authors whose enjoyments 
had been denied him by the cares and exactions of a busy 
career. I am told that Scott and Dickens and Thackeray 
and our other English classics were the charm and consola- 
tion of his last years, and were enjoyed with the keen 
relish of that untainted and receptive mind. In the midst 
of these becoming diversions, not unmingled with studies 
in the domain of the august profession which he so much 
loved, he was called away from these scenes. 

"Oh, fallen at length, that tower of strength, 
Which stood four-square to all the winds that blow ! " 

The Nestor of our bar is dead — 

"Clarum et venerabile nomen!" 

and, now that he is gone, we feel and see what a large 
space he filled in the ranks of the profession. Certainly it 
may appropriately be said of him, as was said of Jeremiah 
Mason by his great compeer, Rufus Choate : "He is dead; 
and although here and there a kindred mind — here and 
there, rarer still, a coeval mind — survives, he has left no 
one, beyond his immediate blood and race, who in the least 
degree resembles him." 



156 DANIEL M. CHRISTIE. 

I rejoice with bis friends, as all must, that until the last 
hour of his long and useful life, until disease struck him, 
as it were in a moment, from the list of the living, his eye 
was undimmed and his wonderful faculties wholly unim- 
paired. Endowed by nature with a vigorous constitution, 
and temperate, upright, and abstemious in his habits ever, 
he had suffered scarcely an hour of sickness during his 
-entire life, and up to almost the very moment of its fall 
there were no signs of dilapidation in that stately edifice. 
His majestic presence was in our streets, the venerable 
object of all men's respect and regard. 

"The monumental pomp of age 
Was with this goodly Personage ; 
A statue undepressed in size, 
Unbent, which rather seemed to rise 
In open victory o'er the weight 
Of eighty years, to loftier height." 

And so, at last, after a life of honor, of integrity, of purity, 
of strenuous exertion, all crowned by a renown sufficient 
to fill and which did fill and satisfy a reasonable ambition, 
he has fallen on sleep. Folding his arms upon his breast, 
his change came to him as calmly and serenely as a sum- 
mer sunset mellows the scene and gilds the close of a brave 
and beautiful day. 

" Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail 
Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, 
Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair, 
And what may quiet us in a death so noble." 

To speak the truth of Mr. Christie, in such fashion as I 
can, is to me a labor of love. Although in earlier years I 
was an occasional spectator of some of the forensic contests 
in which he won his fame, I was not honored by his per- 
sonal acquaintance till about eighteen years ago, when I 
became a student in his office. He was then at the zenith 
•of his power and reputation, and the high estimate I had 



DANIEL M. CHRISTIE. 157 

already formed of his abilities and his character was 
heightened day by day by the knowledge which I gained 
of him in an intercourse which lasted many years — which I 
may perhaps without vanity style an intimacy — and which 
suffered no interruption till the day of his death. If I may 
be allowed a word of sensibility personal to myself, I 
would say that he was so uniformly kind and gracious and 
condescending to me, from the first hour of our acquaint- 
ance, that I felt his death an irreparable personal loss, and 
was a sincere mourner at bis grave. And as I linger a 
moment to drop a tear on his bier, I feel an unfeigned sor- 
row that I cannot pay a more suitable and adequate tribute 
to his extraordinary genius and the rare virtues of his 
character. But only kindred minds are able to portray the 
qualities of such a mind and heart, and I console myself 
for failure with the reflection that but few remain who can 
appreciate and delineate for the coming generations a man 
so largely moulded and so richly gifted as he. 



EDWARD F. NOYES. 



J[From the Dover Republican of September 6, 1890. Governor Noyes 
died September 4, 1800.] 

I think it was Edmund Burke who once said of a 
friend that " he had n't a fault in the world that did not 
arise from the excess of some good quality." As I think, 
with a poignant personal grief, of the manly form of 
Edward F. Noyes lying cold in death to-day in that deso- 
lated home in Ohio, but lately so warm and bright with his 
presence, I am reminded of this high encomium as being 
almost literally due to that knightly gentleman whose inti- 
mate friendship I have enjoyed for nearly forty years. 
The sketch in the Republican this evening leaves little to 
be said touching the details of his life. It outlines with 
absolute correctness the events of his early days and his 
military, political, and judicial career. But to those who 
have known him intimately for so many years, somewhat 
seems to be wanting of tribute to his remarkable person- 
ality. I will not here indulge in reminiscences of his boy- 
hood, or review my own first glimpse of him, 

" In life's morning march, 
When my bosom was young." 

Suffice it to say that from his earliest years he was every- 
where a delightful and controlling presence, impressing 
favorably all who came within reach of his influence. In 
college he was the most pojjular and noticeable man in his 



EDWARD F. NOYES. 



159 



<elass, and gave promise of the future distinction which he 
attained. In 1856, while still an undergraduate, he took 
the stump for Fremont, and attracted wide and admiring 
.attention as a youthful orator. 

Going to Cincinnati, by accident in 1857, he soon 
became a favorite in that rich, refined, and elegant city, 
was admitted to the bar, and had already entered upon a 
successful career, when the war opened the way for him, 
as for many another young man, to another destiny. An 
ardent anti-slavery man and Republican, he entered the 
military service in 1861 as major of the 39th Ohio Volun- 
teers, was with his regiment in many battles in the cam- 
paigns of the west, and rose by rapid promotions to be its 
colonel. On the 4th of July, 1864, serving under Sher- 
man, and leading a gallant charge at Ruff's Mills on the 
Chattahoochee river in Georgia, he was severely wounded, 
and in consequence lost a leg. The limb was amputated 
on the field, but so unskilfully that it had to be again 
amputated twice in the hospital, causing him to suffer the 
most excruciating agony, which he barely survived. He 
was bre vetted brigadier-general in 1865. 

On his partial recovery from his wounds, crippled and 
penniless, his outlook for the future was, as I have heard 
him say, very desperate ; but the people of Cincinnati, who 
never afterwards failed him, rallied to his support, and in 
1865 and 1867 elected him successively to the offices of 
city solicitor of Cincinnati, and judge of probate of Hamil- 
ton County. The latter office was lucrative, and tided him 
over his time of distress and difficulty. So faithful were 
his services and so conspicuous his talents that he was 
chosen governor of Ohio in 1871, but for no fault of his, 
but through the over-confidence of his party in the "off 
year," 1873, he was defeated by a few votes by the cele- 
brated William Allen. This was a severe blow to him, and 
perhaps the turning point in his fortunes ; for many of the 
most discerning commentators upon public events have 
said and believed that if Governor Noyes had been 



160 EDWARD F. NOYES. 

reelected in 1873 he would have been nominated and 
elected president of the United States in 1876, instead of 
Rutherford B. Hayes. 

Prompted by strong personal friendship, as well as by 
appreciation of his abilities and recognition of the brilliant 
services he rendered to him and the party in the campaign 
of 1876, President Hayes made Governor Noyes United 
States minister to France, and he held that place, combin- 
ing its duties with extensive foreign travel, from 1877 to 
1881. In Paris his house was the centre of an elegant and 
profuse hospitality, and a delightful place for all Ameri- 
cans. No man has ever performed all the diplomatic and 
social duties of that high position more thoroughly, or 
more to the credit of his country than he. 

His career, subsequent to his resignation in 1881, is 
recounted accurately in the Republican. Considered 
intellectually, Governor Noyes was a very strong man. 
Not ordinarily a very close or laborious student, he yet had 
the capacity to thoroughly master any subject in hand at 
very short notice, and never fell short of the demands of 
any situation in which he found himself placed. For 
example, his political life had withdrawn him largely from 
the study of the law, and when recently chosen to the 
bench of the superior court of Cincinnati, he was, of 
course, not fresh in the knowledge of the books and prece- 
dents. But he immediately applied himself to the require- 
ments of the position, and with such great and immediate 
success that, by the universal accord of bench, bar, and 
people, he in a short time became an accomplished judge, 
and at his death was laying the foundation of a splendid 
judicial reputation. 

But public speaking was the passion of his life. In 
early youth, when a printer's apprentice here in. Dover, he 
was deeply interested in amateur theatricals and the prac- 
tice of elocution. This practice was the basis of his great 
subsequent success as a public speaker. He became one of 
the finest orators of the country. His enthusiastic and 



EDWARD F. NOYES. 161 

magnetic nature, his noble heart, his warm imagina- 
tion, his elevated sentiments, his broad and deep sym- 
pathies, his rare wit and humor, his rich voice, his 
fine culture, and study of the best models, — all these 
united to form an orator of the highest order, sought 
and welcomed on every platform. His efforts before 
great popular audiences seeking light and guidance upon 
political questions, as well as his occasional efforts of 
another kind, like his speech nominating Mr. Hayes for the 
presidency at the Cincinnati convention in 1876, his eulogy 
on Grant at Music Hall in 1885, and his oration at the ded- 
ication of the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce in 1888, 
were such as to give him great fame, which will be of an 
enduring character. His eloquence was warm, impassioned, 
and glowing, like his nature — and thousands who have 
been roused and electrified by his speech will never cease 
to rank him among the first of our great orators. 

But his friends loved the man more than the orator. My 
pen will not essay to paint the charm of his chivalric bear- 
ing, his princely, almost reckless, generosity, his overflow- 
ing hospitality, his delight in the presence and entertain- 
ment of his friends. He was a fascinating man in private 
life, a genial companion, a magnificent raconteur, a gentle- 
man in his manners and language, and of such vivacity 
and brilliancy as made him the admired centre of every 
social circle in which he moved. He was a public-spirited 
citizen, a good husband, devotedly attached to his home, a 
fond father, and a faithful and loyal friend. As his popu- 
lar manners, known sincerity, and eloquent speech swayed 
the people, so his noble inherent qualities of^head and 
heart enchained his personal friends. 

But alas ! all this genius, all this oratorical achievement, 
all this warm affection, this genial presence, this flowing- 
courtesy and abandon which were so genuine ameffluence 
of the generous heart within — all these, and how can we. 
ever forget them ? — are hidden in a too early grave J 

But, 

n 



162 EDWARD F. NOYES. 

" To live in hearts we leave behind, 
Is not to die." 

These precious memories and impressive admonitions 
should not and will not be lost upon the many men and 
women all over the land who had learned to love Edward 
F. Noyes. To those of us of his age the shadows of life are 
rapidly lengthening. In the short span that still remains, 
shall we ever see another combining so attractively nearly 
all the human traits that command attachment and 
admiration ? 

Statesman, soldier, patriot, orator, jurist, friend of my 
early and later days, farewell ! 



ANDREW H. YOUNG. 



[From the Dover Republican of Dec. 15, 1890. Col. Young died Dec. 

10, 1890.] 

I have not felt that I could write anything about this 
dear and valued friend. I venture upon a few words with 
great reluctance. My intimacy with him was such as men 
shrink from displaying to the public gaze ; but at the same 
time it gave me a view of his character vouchsafed to only 
a few of his dearest friends. 

Those who have written of him within a few days past 
have recorded an appreciative estimate of his virtues, and 
his reputation is one of which his family and friends can 
find no cause to complain. But I have known him for 
nearly fifty years, and by seeing him often, and under 
many circumstances, in domestic, civil, and military life, 
have become possessed of the secrets of his character as far 
as those are ever imparted to a friend. 

Col. Young was fortunate in his birth and early training 
in a country town, and of a good family stock. His father 
was a man noted for his shrewd mother wit, sound judg- 
ment, and* practical ability. He inherited all these quali- 
ties from his father in a high degree, and supplemented 
them with a fair education, an early introduction to affairs, 
and a more than usually full acquaintance with prominent 
men in all departments of life. I have heard men say not 
infrequently that a higher education would have made him 
a much greater man. I do not regard this as at all certain. 
Education long-continued in the schools sometimes over- 
lays and smothers, or impairs, or fetters great natural capa- 



164 ANDKEW H. YOUNG. 

city. In other words the powers of some men do not work 
so effectively under the added restraints and severities of 
taste and self-criticism, as without them. I have known 
more than one man who would have been a much greater 
force in the world if he had had less of the mere book- 
learning which we insist upon calling education. In the 
case of Col. Young, able and successful man as he was, 
wielding a large influence in the community, and generally 
wielding it for good, I am quite prepared to believe that his 
powers had freer play and easier scope than if he had 
delved for years among Greek and Latin roots, and the 
mysteries of the ologies. But this is a province of mere 
conjecture, and as we stand at the end of his completed 
life, it is impossible to tell what " might have been," — and 
we have little interest in the inquiry, since we are so well 
satisfied with what he was. 

Col. Young took easy rank among intellectual men. He 
had an inquiring and receptive mind, was a great reader, 
and remembered with a good deal of tenacity what he had 
once learned. Consequently he always left the impression 
of a man of strong intelligence and wide and varied infor- 
mation. He appreciated fully the highest things and best 
people, and was a bright, original, witty, and interesting 
writer. Many of his letters, some addressed to me and 
some to others, have been read and re-read, and given de- 
light to large circles of friends. 

His youth comes up vividly before me. In his early 
years he worked on the farm and worked hard. He drove 
oxen and I drove horses to Dover at the same time. We 
often met and greeted each other on the road ; we met at 
the church door, at the singing school, the spelling school, 
the donation party, at social gatherings, and the country 
lyceum, and thus formed that early friendship which has 
never suffered an interruption, and has been one of the 
chief comforts and supports of my life. He took an early 
interest in politics, but was condemned to the minority for 
a number of years. His first opportunity for a broader life 



ANDREW H. YOUNG. 165 

presented itself in the great political revolution whose first 
wave broke over New Hampshire in 1855. He was not 
slow to avail himself of it, and easily stepped to the very 
front of the movement in Barrington and the county of 
Strafford. He was elected register of deeds, and since then 
has enjoyed public preferment a good part of the time. He 
had to fight his way, however, from the start. Some short- 
sighted and a few envious people were jealous of that influ- 
ence upon those around him, and upon the course of events, 
which he exerted as naturally and easily as he drew breath. 
He rarely failed to disarm the hostility of the men he came 
in contact with. His geniality, his unfailing good nature, 
his rich fund of anecdote, and his invincible determination 
to have no personal difficulty with anybody, always 
brought him off conqueror of men's hearts. I recall but 
one prominent man who was irreconcilable to the end. 
Even he loved him — but he could n't abide the idea that an 
upstart from Barrington should, by finesse, and skill, and 
good fellowship, and a profound understanding of men, 
wrest caucuses and conventions out of his hand, with such 
consummate ease. 

I do not think Col. Young ever suffered any discredit, 
except the supposed disgrace of being a " politician." He 
belonged to that much misunderstood and much abused 
class, and the head and front of his offending, in the eyes 
of many, was that he was a skilful and successful one. 
But he was a politician whose aims were statesmanlike for 
he had a large comprehension of public affairs, and sought 
to make his own profound convictions the policy of the 
country. This was the only austerity in his character — 
his deep and ineradicable devotion to the party connection 
to which he belonged. In almost all things else he was com- 
pliant and flexible — but this line he would not bend. In 
politics he was no trimmer, no compromiser, nor time- 
server. His methods were honorable. I speak of what I 
know. He knew how to handle men, and to accomplish 
results. He was very adroit, fertile in resources, and hard 



L66 ANDREW H. YOUNG. 

to throw. But he generally reached the desired end — 
always a good one, so far as I know — without unfair treat- 
ment of political friends or adversaries. He accomplished 
his purpose by the use of those resources with which he 
was so richly endowed, — good sense, sagacity, good nature, 
and 

" A wit in the combat, which, gentle as bright, 
Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade." 

I am afraid we have fewer honorable politicians now 
than we did in our young days. The issues have dwindled 
and lost moral character. The trumpet note to great ac- 
tions sounds not out its summons so clearly now as then. 
" The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, econo- 
mists, and calculators has succeeded." We had great bat- 
tles to fight from 1855 to 1872, and without "politicians" 
to keep the rudder true, the Republic would have gone 
down, and civilization and humanity have been buried 
with it in a common grave. 

Some of the men who sneer now-a-days at the " politi- 
cians" of that period, know better and are contemptible ; 
but the neophytes of to-day know no better and are only to 
blame for their ignorance. 

There seems no occasion to dwell with biographical 
minuteness upon the main incidents of Colonel Young's 
life. These have been given with accuracy in what the 
papers have said of him since his death. 1 seek only to 
note some of his personal traits, as I have already, and in 
speaking of those I know that I voice the feelings and sen- 
timents of many men prominent in public life to whom the 
tidings of his departure have brought a poignant personal 
grief. 

One of his rarest peculiarities was the faculty of making 
himself agreeable to everybody. He had a great memory, 
and was a picturesque story-teller. He entered most hap- 
pily into the varying moods and interests of different men. 
He was genial and companionable to the highest degree 



ANDREW H. YOUNG. 167 

and his society was coveted by many great men. Our late 
townsman, John P. Hale, was particularly fond of him. 
He liked to be with him, to walk with him, to ride with 
him, to spend long evenings with him ; and it was a treat 
to be with them and hear the interchange of pleasantries 
between men so naturally humorous as they. I recall 
many delightful evenings in Mr. Hale's then unbroken 
family circle, when the badinage and repartee were enjoy- 
able to the last degree. Mr. Hale, with that love of trees 
which made him wish to have one in every place large 
enough to hold it, actually planted with his own hand the 
trees that now shade Colonel Young's grave at Pine Hill ; 
and if I am not mistaken, Colonel Young reciprocated the 
compliment by planting some of those that now wave over 
the great senator. 

Our other departed friend, Edward H. Rollins, always 
loved and trusted, enjoyed and leaned on him. 

The late Gov. Edward F. Noyes, brilliant, eloquent, and 
famous man, noble patriot, brave soldier, peerless orator, 
loved him like a brother, and watched over him only a few 
months ago in a critical illness in Kentucky, with all the 
assiduity of affection and esteem. What a commentary 
upon the instability of human life ! for Governor Noyes, 
then in perfect health, has preceded him by three months to 
the tomb. I think he was profoundly and seriously 
impressed by Governor Noyes's sudden death. 

Among his numerous living friends eminent in public 
life I may mention Senators Blair and Chandler, ex-Sena- 
tors Cragin, Bell, and Cheney, ex-Governors Smyth, Saw 
yer, and Prescott, and indeed all our ex-governors, sena- 
tors, and congressmen of these late years, besides General 
Batch elder, quartermaster-general, U. S. A., and a host of 
friends of high rank in the army. 

His pastor, Rev. Geo. E. Hall, to whom he was devotedly 
attached, at his obsequies very properly and most feel- 
ingly alluded to his deep and constant interest in the old 
First Parish Church, where he attended on divine service, 



168 ANDREW H. YOUNG. 

and paid fitting tribute to his remarkable capacity for per- 
sonal friendship. In this connection he read an impressive 
letter from Rev. Dr. George B. Spalding who also carried 
Colonel Young deep down in his heart. In it he justly 
said, "I have rarely known a man possessed of so many 
traits which call out our love and highest esteem." 

Colonel Young took an interest in the town where we 
were born, and loved the old paternal acres and the old 
neighbors and townsmen all, and no one of them will hear 
of his departure without sorrow. 

He was a conscientious public officer. In many offices 
of high responsibility involving the handling of large 
amounts of public money he was incorruptibly honest, and 
accounted scrupulously for every dollar. The last work of 
his life was the erection and fitting up of the government 
barracks at Newport, Ky. He took great pride in it, and 
worked hard, perhaps fatally, at the task. He did the work 
so as to earn the unqualified approval of the war depart- 
ment, and with signal economy and honesty of disburse- 
ment. 

He was proud of the service in which he was engaged. 
He prized his record as a soldier, and was attached to a 
host of soldier friends and comrades only in a less degree 
than to the glorious flag under which he served. It was 
appropriate that the Grand Army of the Republic should 
pronounce its superb burial service over him as he slept 
his last sleep, with the emblem of the Loyal Legion of the 
United States shining on his breast. 

Above all he was a loyal and true-hearted friend, and 
merited all the personal friendship which he inspired in 
others. Under an exterior of somewhat careless indiffer- 
ence he hid a deep affection for wife and children, broth- 
ers, sisters, and all kindred. Those offices of love and help- 
fulness which he never failed to give them were repaid in 
his last days by a devotion on the part of his family which 
was as touching as beautiful. 

After all, how little can I convey any true impression of 



ANDREW H. YOUNG. 169 

this well-known and much-admired man. Only a desultory 
word, touching here and there his prominent character- 
istics, that is all I have said or can say. So close was he to 
me, so thoroughly entwined in all my interests and pur- 
suits, so sympathetic with all that I desired and strove for, 
so solicitous for my family, so unfailing a resource in 
every time of trouble, that I feel that outside of my own 
domestic circle there is not another such loss in store for 
me as I have sustained in his too early death. 

" In love surpassing that of brothers, 

We walked, O friend, from childhood's day ; 
And looking back o'er fifty summers, 
Our footprints track a common way.'" 

As he lay in his coffin, amid the profusion of flowers, the 
roses, and lilies, and ivy chaplets with which affection had 
surrounded him, and we looked upon his face for the last 
time, there was a tranquility upon it which was beautiful. 
It was but the reflection of his kindly, sunny, and loving 
nature. 

And again as we committed him to the earth on that 
cold, bleak, winter day, we who had known and been 
loved by him in life felt that we had 

". . . made him a grave too cold and damp, 
For a heart so warm and true." 

But in his last hours we had talked of meeting again in 
the land of light, and as one by one we lay away our 
beloved, we live in that faith till the resurrection morn. 



ORATION. 



[Delivered at the dedication of the soldiers' and sailors' monument,. 
Derry, N. H, Oct. 1, 1889.] 

Me. President, Comrades, and Friends: In a quite 
uncommon sense we stand on holy ground, and in address- 
ing the citizens of this ancient and honorable township, any 
man would be insensible to the highest suggestions of the 
place and occasion if he were not mindful constantly of 
your illustrious origin and your noble and heroic history. 
No town in America can boast a better ancestry than this> 
and you trace your lineage back through strains of the best 
blood that was ever employed in the foundation of a state. 
As this is not an occasion, however, for minute or compre- 
hensive historical treatment, we may not linger long even 
with the precious memory of your Scotch-Irish ancestors 
who founded old Londonderry here in the wilderness 170 
years ago. That emigration was in its characteristics strik- 
ingly different from the germ of nearly all colonial settle- 
ments. Your forefathers came here, not as the immigrant 
now comes, in sheer want and stress of food and shelter, but 
from better lands than could here be had, and from all the 
comfort and plenty which the best people in Europe then 
enjoyed. They came, not from a mere physical necessity to 
gain the means of supporting life, but from a higher com- 
pulsion, the necessity of the soul, the obligation which the 
Providence of God lays on great men and great races in all 
ages to plant and propagate and disseminate their princi- 
ples, to found states, and to build themselves into the work 
of their time and the ever-progressive life of the world. A 



OEATION. 171 

most impressive fact is found in the reasons given by the 
Rev. James McGregor, the first minister of Londonderry, 
for the removal of the little band to whom he ministered 
to America, the chiefest of which were " to avoid oppres- 
sion, to shun persecution, and to have an opportunity of 
worshiping God according to the dictates of conscience." 
And not less striking is the fact that the memorial of the 
"Inhabitants of y e North of Ireland" to Governor Shute, 
of Massachusetts, preliminary to the emigration, setting 
forth their desire and purpose to remove to America if 
sufficient encouragement should be given, was signed by 
217 men, of whom all but seven signed their own names. 
Nine of them were ministers of the gospel, and three of 
them graduates of the University of Scotland. This dem- 
onstrates that the original nucleus of this population, 
which stands before me now the consummate flower of the 
best life that the progress of mankind has developed, was of 
exceptional intelligence, and of the highest order the world 
then afforded. They were Puritans, and the description of 
them in the world-renowned passage of Macaulay still 
remains the most graphic and truthful thing that has been 
said of what he styles " the most remarkable body of men 
which the world has ever produced." 

" The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a 
peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior 
beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledg- 
ing, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habit- 
ually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, 
for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection 
nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to 
enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. They 
rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other 
sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. Instead 
of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an 
obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on his intolerable 
brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence 
originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The 



IT. ORATION. 

difference between the greatest and the meanest of mankind 
seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless inter- 
val which separated the whole race from him on whom their 
own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognized no title 
to superiority but his favor; and confident of that favor, 
they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities 
of the world. If they were unacquainted with the works of 
philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles 
of God. If their names were not found in the registers of 
heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their 
steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, 
legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their 
palaces were houses not made with hands ; their diadems 
crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich 
and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down 
with contempt ; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more 
precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, 
nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the 
imposition of a mightier hand. . . . ' . Thus the Puri- 
tan was made up of two different men, the one all self- 
abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion ; the other proud, 
calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the 
dust before his Maker ; but he set his foot on the neck of 
his king He espoused the cause of civil lib- 
erty mainly because it was the cause of religion. . . 

People who saw nothing of the godly but their 
uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their 
groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at them. But 
those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in 
the hall of debate, or in the field of battle." 

The progress of the township for fifty or sixty years after 
its settlement affords one of the best illustrations in our 
colonial history of the working out of these Puritan princi- 
ples. The men who came here were men of great mental 
and physical strength, and exemplified in a remarkable man- 
ner the traits ascribed to them by the brilliant historian. 
Transplanted from cultivated Europe to this unbroken wil- 



ORATION. 173 

clerness, their outward circumstances were of the hardest 
and severest character, and without unremitting industry, 
without patience and pluck and probity, the settlement 
must have perished out of hand. They addressed them- 
selves to the trials and hardships and dangers of their 
chosen lot, and soon brought an orderly commonwealth out 
of the primeval chaos that environed them. They built 
cabins, levelled forests, removed obstructions, and erected 
saw-mills and grist-mills, those earliest accompaniments of 
the industrial pioneer. Many of the leading roads of the 
original town, before its great area was reduced by slicing it 
out piecemeal to others, were laid out within ten or twenty 
years of the founding. They wrestled with the giant growths 
of the centuries, and on their ruins they cleared these fields 
now smiling with the harvests that are golden in the sun. 
All this time they had to defend themselves against ferocious 
beasts and men, as well as subdue the wilderness, although 
not the least admirable of the traits exhibited by these orig- 
inal settlers were the justice and humanity and forbear- 
ance displayed in the treatment of their savage neighbors, 
which bore legitimate fruit in the practical exemption of the 
town from Indian massacres from beginning to end, although 
exposed to all the hazards of an extreme frontier settlement. 

They introduced the potato into New England, and the 
cultivation of flax, the seed of which they had brought with 
them from Ireland ; and as they had been distinguished for 
the manufacture of linen in their European homes, so they 
were the pioneers of that industry in the colonies ; and the 
excellence of their product made it a great source of profit, 
and gave it and them a wide celebrity. 

It goes without saying that the provisions for religious 
worship and instruction were the ven^ earliest attended to. 
The church was built first, but the school-house was not far 
behind. We might think, perhaps, that these progenitors of 
ours wasted some of their time in contemplating the joys 
and torments of the world to come, but no people under 
their circumstances ever did so much to elevate and dignify 



174 ORATION. 

and brighten the world in which they lived. If the Puri- 
tan's eye was fixed on the other world, he by no means for- 
got his duty in this ; and so the school trod closely on the 
heels of the church, in fact was everywhere established and 
maintained by its side. The institutions of religion and 
education were here coeval, and by this is meant the secular 
education of all the people. Their idea cannot be better 
expressed than by repeating the words of a distinguished 
Roman Catholic prelate ; and I wish that all the people of 
his communion would duly weigh them. 

Says Archbishop Hughes, — "Next to religion they prized 
education. If their lot had been cast in some pleasant place 
of the valley of the Mississippi, they would have sown 
wheat and educated their children ; but as it was, they edu- 
cated their children, and planted whatever might grow and 
ripen on that scanty soil with which capricious nature had 
tricked off and disguised the granite beds beneath. Other 
colonies would have brought up some of the people to the 
school ; they, if I may be allowed so to express it, let down 
the school to all the people, not doubting but by so doing 
the people and the school would rise of themselves." 

Time has shown how fully this conception has been real- 
ized in every social state in which their influence has pre- 
dominated ; and your own later educational institutions, 
which have given the town such an enviable rank, are but 
the natural outgrowth and development of the ideas that 
prompted the first common school here established. 

With all this broad and liberal and advanced statesman- 
ship, this zealous pursuit of the arts of peace, they were 
withal a martial race, and in fact so devoted to peace that 
they would have it even if they had to fight for it. Several 
of the emigrants of 1719 had been in the memorable siege 
of Londonderry in 1688, and on that account afterwards 
enjoyed various exemptions and privileges at the hands of 
the crown and of their townsmen. In 1725, three London- 
derry 'men were in the Lovewell expedition against the 
Indians. Robert Rogers, the celebrated Indian Ranger, was 



ORATION. 175 

born here in 1727, and John Stark in 1728. The town 
furnished her quota of men for Louisburg in 1745. She 
was represented at Crown Point in 1755, and in the expedi- 
tion to Canada in 1760. Old Londonderry always had on 
hand her full stock of gunpowder and bullets, and kept 
them in the meeting-house ! The Presbyterians of London- 
derry were then a church militant indeed, and one doc- 
trine of the old Presbyterian ism which these Covenanters 
brought from their Scotch and Irish homes they exempli- 
fied beyond all others in their civil and military life, and 
that was "the perseverance of the saints." 

During all this time there was carried on here one of the 
completest democratic governments the world has ever 
seen. In the town-meeting, where all was done by the 
vote of the majority, there was the fullest recognition of 
the brotherhood and equality of men. A study of your 
town records exhibits a thorough working of the town- 
meeting, upon which De Tocqueville and Bryce have laid 
so much stress as the nursery of American liberty and the 
training-school of American statesmanship ; and these rec- 
ords will be an enduring monument to the wisdom of the 
men whose associated action is there recorded. In view of 
those records and the visible results of the polity there 
illustrated, it is not too much, and it is not flattery, to say 
that this is the most interesting of all the municipalities of 
New Hampshire, and that around it will ever cluster asso- 
ciations of the rarest attraction to the antiquary, the stu- 
dent, and the statesman. 

Under the combined influence of this fifty years of polit- 
ical apprenticeship, this discipline in war, in the rigors of 
the old New England climate, in peril from wild beasts 
and still more savage men, in "plain living and high think- 
ing," it is not strange that this town, which had poured 
out its best blood for the British crown and to wrest and 
keep the dominion of this great coming empire from the 
grasp of France, should have become ready to take up arms 
in defence of her own ancestral rights, the liberties guar- 



176 ORATION. 

an teed by Magna Charta and the Petition of Right, when- 
ever they should be assailed, even though the ungrateful 
blow should come from the Mother Country. At an early 
day nowhere did the sentiment against taxation without 
representation, against arbitary exactions and oppressions 
of every kind, rise higher than here. And so, when no 
alternative but war or submission remained to the colonies, 
the town entered resolutely into the conflict of the Revolu- 
tion. Her sentiment in favor of severing the connection 
with England was well-nigh universal ; all but fifteen read- 
ily signed the Association Test, and the Tories who refused 
were silenced or driven from her borders. 

Capt. George Reed, afterwards so distinguished in the 
war, marched with a full company of his townsmen to 
Bunker Hill, and in all full}' one hundred men of London- 
derry were engaged in this first great battle of the Revolu- 
tion. A company of seventy men from Londonderry were 
in the battle of Bennington, where the heroic fibre of this 
town was tested in command as in the ranks, and Mollie 
Stark did not sleep a widow that night. By emigration 
after emigration from the north of Ireland the settlement 
had become at that time populous and strong; and under 
the influence of her principles and the military leadership 
of Stark and Reed she sent her men to the rescue in every 
campaign of Washington, and was throughout the back- 
bone of the Revolution in New Hampshire. Although 
many others were older, and several stronger in numbers 
and older by nearly a century, yet the fact remains to her 
imperishable honor that Londonderry from first to last 
furnished more men to the armies of the Revolution than 
any other town in New Hampshire. Her contribution to 
the great struggle in the single person of John Stark was 
of incalculable value, for under his iron will and magnetic 
leadership, lit up by the grim pleasantry of his Scotch 
humor, the flank of the British column of invasion was 
crushed at Bennington, and the surrender of Burgoyne 
made inevitable. And thus helping to conquer in the Rev- 



ORATION. 177 

olution and to sever the connection with the British empire, 
there is abundant proof that the people of Londonderry 
acted under the inspiration of the political traditions, the 
immemorial rights, and the jealously guarded privileges of 
the English name. They kept step to the music of Crom- 
well's Ironsides at Dunbar and Naseby, and won a victory 
not for themselves alone, but, in the name of the whole 
English-speaking race, for all mankind. 

Time will permit not even an outline of the life and 
progress of this town for the seventy years following the 
winning of Independence and the formation of the Consti- 
tution. The growth and progress of the American Union 
during that time are the standing marvel and phenomenon 
of history. This town kept pace with it, if not in popula- 
tion, certainly in all else that could ennoble and uplift a 
people. And so at the end of that period we can see 
that by all the steps of its political life, by all the pro- 
gressive development of its principles in the town meetings 
of one hundred and forty years, it had become prepared 
for the duty of defending its liberty wherever and how- 
ever assailed ; and when the impious hand of treason was 
raised against that Union, under which all this marvelous 
growth and progress and happiness had been achieved, 
and the summons to arms rang out over hill and glen and 
prairie, the people were too thoroughly matured in the 
school of liberty, and they knew its value too well, to 
suffer the nation to be rent asunder by faction or mur- 
dered by traitors. The alacrity and patriotism of your 
response to the call to arms was not the result of accident 
or whim. " We do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of 
thistles." If, when the test came, truer and nobler men 
never fought or died for a great cause, it was because they 
were men nurtured under our government. They were 
the product of our civilization and institutions. They 
were the ripe fruit of years of development, of culture, and 
of civic discipline. The men who went to their country's 



178 ORATION. 

defence were not the scum of great cities, not the refuse of 
a community of many gradations of social rank, — 

" The cankers of a calm world and a long peace." 

They were not conscripts forced by the will of rulers, 
one or many, into a service which was indifferent or repug- 
nant to them, — not such broken, reckless, and worthless 
waifs of society as float into the standing armies of the 
world, its Hessians and its hirelings, — not men without 
social standing, without kinship, who make up in other 
lands and ages the mercenary legions of ambitious con- 
querors, or of states steeped in the lust of conquest and 
power. No such cause appealed to them ; no such army 
came forth in defense of the Union. On the contrary, 
they were the best blood of these country towns of ours, 
sons of the best men and women in them, heads of young 
families, the bone and muscle of the nation, and represent- 
ative of its best and bravest blood and purpose. They 
were free men who came of their own free will, and with 
the solemn but unwavering determination to keep their 
liberties for themselves and their posterity. They came in no 
spirit of bravado, in no vain-glory, but seriously, prayerfully, 
they answered to the call of country, counting all the 
cost of the service, with a full realization of the dangers and 
trials before them, but springing to arms, not at the call of 
a master whom they feared, but of a country they loved and 
would save, and meeting the duty before them with Luther's 
glorious words, " I cannot do otherwise, God helping me !" 
Such were the men who went out from Derry to fight the 
battles of the Union. They were "bone of your bone and 
flesh of your flesh," your bravest and best, representative of 
all that was best in your ancestors, and in the society that 
had grown out of a century of town-meetings, and of liberty 
such as no nation ever enjoyed before. They embraced 
every condition of your social life, the learned and the un- 
learned, the rich and the poor, the proud and the humble ; 
together they rallied around the standard of the Republic, 



ORATION. 179 

together they stood, together they fell, and together their 
names are inscribed on this monumental bronze. The} r left 
behind the comforts and sweets of domestic life, the endear- 
ments of family and kindred ; they swung on their knap- 
sacks and marched with Sherman across the continent ; they 
stood among the guns in the smoking lines of Gettysburg ; 
they plunged into the bloody thickets of the Wilderness ; 
they swept into the "imminent deadly breach" of Cold 
Harbor; they were with Grant when the Confederacy went 
down at Appomattox. The men of Derry were no lag- 
gards and no camp-followers. They faltered in the face 
of no danger. They went into the front ranks. They 
pressed into the forlorn hope. They were enrolled in nearly 
every regiment that New Hampshire sent to the field. In 
fifteen New Hampshire organizations of troops I find Derry 
represented, and inscribed on this stone are more than 150 
names of the living and the dead who took up arms in the 
defence of the country. The town spent upwards of $50,000 
in bounties alone, and not only answered every call, but at 
the end had filled every quota, and had seven men more to 
her credit towards a call that was never made. 

In undertaking to set forth what this town did for the 
preservation of the Union, we should fall far short of any 
due estimate of its achievements if we should fail to take 
into the account a more or less general view of the influ- 
ences of this settlement upon the character and opinions of 
other towns and states. From the first, the men who planted 
themselves here were a restless, enterprising, and adventur- 
ous people. They were not content with subduing the for- 
ests, the wild beasts, the savage men and the inclemencies 
of the climate and soil of old Londonderry. Their views 
extended further, and before the century had closed they 
had formed settlements in every direction ; and such noble 
towns as Bedford, Peterborough, New Boston, Antrim, Hen- 
niker, Merrimack, Acworth, and Goffstown received acces- 
sions from them, and most of these towns and others were 
started under their auspices. Nor did their movement stop 



180 ORATION. 

with our own borders. "Their line has gone out through 
all the earth." The sons and daughters of Londonderry are 
found in every state in the Union, from lake to gulf and from 
shore to shore, carrying with them always the sturdy prin- 
ciples of civil and religious liberty, which they inherit from 
a manly and God-fearing ancestry, and wherever they have 
gone in force the church and the school, the symbols of 
New England civilization, have been planted side by side. 
In his racy way Mr. Depew says that the secret of the suc- 
cess of the Puritan is his unrest : that he won't stay in one 
place ; that he is the most beneficent of tramps ; he never has 
room enough — he wants the earth. It is obviously true, 
though spoken in jest. Not content with subduing New 
England, he turned his conquering footsteps towards the 
west, and taking New York on his way, he has sown the 
valley of the Mississippi, the slopes of the Rocky Mountains, 
and the foot-hills of the Sierras, thick with the stars of em- 
pire. The sons of this soil, carrying with them New Eng- 
land training, pluck, and skill, have made their way, by vigor 
of intellect, energy of character, and high principle, to the 
front ranks of every department of business, in private and 
public life, wherever they have gone. In all our Western 
states and territories, the Puritan has stamped the impress 
of his principles upon the constitutions and laws. Inured to 
trials and privations, he has everywhere had the courage of 
his convictions ; and he never went so far west or north, he 
never planted a ranche so remote or lonely, on snowy sum- 
mit, or in ragged gulch, or on arid plain, that you did not 
soon find a church and a school within reach of it. He has 
planted his banners on every hill-top and sowed the seed of 
his ideas in every valley, giving to the new world wherever 
his influence has extended a broad and rational liberty, and 
making it the perpetual abiding-place of free government. 
This great influence is the sheer result of character, — and 
never was there a laboratory like this early life of our ances- 
tors, here in the wilderness, who believed that the fear of 
God was the beginning and the end of wisdom, never such 



ORATION. 181 

a crucible for the melting out of all dross and weakness, and 
the formation of clear, definite, and uncompromising charac- 
ter, — that logic of character, as Dr. Twichell says, " which 
might split hairs, but would never split the difference." 

I speak at this moment, perhaps, rather of that composite 
character, the New England Yankee, who is the resultant 
of many ancestral forces, and who carries in his veins numer- 
ous strains of blood. Many streams of tendency have been 
lost in the Yankee, but wherever is found an infusion of the 
Puritan or the Scotch Covenanter, it is the vital principle 
of the man, and there are found in predominating propor- 
tion those traits which I have spoken of as their ruling char- 
acteristics, their Christian fortitude, their self-denial, their 
purity, piety, sincerity, simplicity, their seriousness, their 
independence, manliness, courage, their indomitable patience 
and endurance, their perseverance in the face of obstacles, 
their devotion to duty, their supreme loyalty to conviction. 

Therefore in the fullness of time, from this great evolution 
of character in the Northern states there emerged a man, — 
the soldier of the Union in the War of the Rebellion, type 
of the citizenship of towns like this, who was willing to 
fight, and, if need be, to die for his ideas, for the Common- 
wealth and the federated Republic that had grown up here 
in the western world from the seed his ancestors had sown, 
seed "sown in weakness, but raised in power." 

It was no haphazard, therefore, that the man of New 
England lineage fought in the Rebellion. He was built that 
way. He shouldered his musket and locked step with the 
great army of the Union, for the command rang out to him 
from every page of the story of his ancestors, and stirred in 
every pulse of his being. Because it was the habit of his 
race and the necessity of his soul, he fought for civil and 
religious liberty, for the emancipation of a race that had 
been cruelly defrauded of its birthright for 200 years, and 
for an indissoluble Union of indestructible states. 

In fact, the Rebellion itself, in its essence, was an assault, 
pure and simple, upon New England principles. In the 



182 ORATION. 

same year that the Mayflower crossed the ocean, bearing to 
the western continent the Pilgrim Fathers, another ship 
buffeted the same sea, and brought with her a cargo of 19 
slaves, and landed them at Jamestown, in Virginia. That 
was the fatal seed of American slavery, the upas tree which 
struck deep its poisonous root, and threatened so long to 
overshadow the whole land. Mr. Sumner well said, that in 
the holds of these two ships were concealed the germs of the 
War of the Rebellion. The existence of democracy and 
slavery in the same government was a palpable anomaly, 
which could only end in violence. They were the lion and 
the bear in the same cage, each compelled to fight for his 
life. It was an irrepressible conflict from the beginning. At 
length slavery, grown insolent, aggressive, and intolerable, 
raised the standard of revolt and struck at the nation's life. 
The issue was thus transferred from the senate chamber to 
the judgment seat of the God of Battles, there to be pleaded 
in that tongue which alone is understood the world over, the 
voice of the cannon. 

The appeal was made to the descendants of the men who 
had braved wintry seas and every other terror to found here 
" a Church without a bishop and a State without a king," — 
the men who had stood around the cradle of liberty and 
rocked her into a glorious maturity. There could be but 
one answer. The early narrowness and illiberality of the 
Puritan polity had disappeared ; but there had grown with 
her growth necessarily a peaceful but stern antagonism to 
the " peculiar institution," and it was the Puritan ideas of 
education, of fredom, of morality, of public justice, which 
the South could brook no longer. On one side, the seduc- 
tions of trade and the temptations of interest urged upon 
the North a further submission ; on the other, were the tra- 
ditions of a race of men devoted to their liberty, and that 
"higher law" which Theodore Parker said was "higher 
than the dome of any state-house," and which Webster in 
derision said, "soared an eagle's flight above the tops of the 
Alleghanies." The gage of battle thus thrown down was 



ORATION. 183 

promptly taken up, and proclaimed that the men who first 
feared God knew no other fear. The entire North was in 
fact infused with the Puritan spirit. De Tocqueville, the 
French political philosopher, said, fifty years ago, that the 
United States was only an enlarged New England, and that 
the men of Plymouth Rock were the men out of whose teem- 
ing brains have flowed the ideas that have inspired our life 
and shaped our national policy, subject only to the resistance 
of slavery in the southern belt. Therefore, when the fire upon 
Sumter electrified the nation, it was Plymouth Rock and 
Londonderry that went marching in the van of battle. 
New England not only sent the children of her loins, but 
she went herself; and the Puritan, who had sat in judg- 
ment upon kings and brought them to the block, the Puri- 
tan, who, as Macaulay says, "prayed with his knee on the 
neck of the tyrant," never yet stepped upon afield of battle 
without staying to the finish ! And so, after seasons of 
defeat and despair which made strong men's hearts fail them 
for fear — when 600 sanguinary battles had been fought, 
and half a million of the bravest and best in the land had 
laid down their lives in the struggle, — the victory when it 
came was a victory of New England ; not the triumph of 
force over force simply, but the victory of ideas and princi- 
ples which are the birthright of humanity in all lands. As its 
crowning result, the manacles were struck from the limbs of 
four million bondmen, and the country was freed at last from 
the burden of its great sin, when "every drop of blood drawn 
with the lash had been paid with another drawn with the 
sword." Viewed in every light, the war was a war for New 
England principles and ideals, and as it was unprecedented 
in its proportions, so was it unique in every other respect. 
No army ever before marched or fought containing so much 
intelligence, so much moral worth, so much high character, 
humanity, public spirit, and devotion to country, as that of 
the American Union. The Union soldier never forgot that 
he was contending with his brother, with whom he would 
surely be reconciled, and live in peace and amity and equal- 



184 ORATION. 

ity. It was, therefore, not a vandal army ; and its record of 
humanity, magnanimity, and clemency to the conquered puts 
to shame the record of every other victorious army on the 
globe. Lee himself said that General Grant's treatment of 
the Army of Northern Virginia was without a parallel in the 
history of the civilized world. And when all was over, and 
the Union stood in triumph over the prostrate cause of its 
adversary, there were no confiscations, no proscriptions, no 
attainders, no executions for treason, and no insolent sol- 
diery lording it over the counsels of its own government and 
the conditions of peace. 

It were vain to undertake any discussion of the vast influ- 
ences for good which have taken their rise in this struggle 
of ours for a larger liberty. Its beneficent results are seen 
in the events transpiring all over the world ; — in the liberal- 
ization of governments and laws ; in the loosening grasp of 
tryannies; in a united Italy; in the union of Germany; in 
a republican France ; in the rising hopes of every down- 
trodden people ; in the regeneration of the East ; in the agi- 
tations for popular reforms in England ; and especially for 
that inevitable Home Rule everywhere, which we have prac- 
tised for two centuries, and which is the most momentous 
discovery in the whole realm of political science. Surely, if 
our people have not emigrated eastward our ideas have, and 
are shaping the policy of the civilized world to-day. Not 
only have we ourselves entered into a wider, deeper, and 
richer political life, and feel the pulsations of a mightier 
national existence throbbing to the farthest extremity of the 
Republic, but every country in the world to-day is freer on 
account of our struggle. Institutions have become liberal- 
ized, wars have declined, and all peoples have brighter pros- 
pects for the future. Every peasant and laborer goes to his 
couch nightly with an added security against oppression, 
against war and conscription ; and every despot and absolute 
ruler, I may say with equal truth, with an added insecu- 
rity, and with the Damocles sword of popular rights hanging 
over his head by a slenderer thread. 



ORATION. 185 

There is, therefore, a propriety that cannot be questioned 
in the office of love and commemoration which we are here 
to discharge to-day. You have met here to mark by a visible 
symbol your remembrance and affection for those of your 
own number, who, responding to the common call, gave up 
their lives for the liberty of all, and have entered into their 
rest. And not only do you honor those who, having served 
their own generation, " have fallen on sleep," but also all the 
living of the great host who stood in battle array for the Re- 
public, — for 3 r ou have caused all their names to be inscribed 
on this beautiful shaft, where, as we fondly hope, they may be 
read in future times, for more than the six generations which 
found the names of the fallen at Marathon still legible on that 
illustrious field. How appropriate and harmonious the de- 
sign, — the solid granite pedestal surmounted by the bronze 
military figure, emblematic of the austere and grand pur- 
pose ! And how well you have chosen the site — a place 
beautiful for situation, with a wide out-look upon hills and 
valleys that are instinct with noble traditions of work done 
and suffering borne for free principles ! 

You do well, and act in a high mood, when you honor 
these men, one and all. They were worthy descendants of 
the founders of this goodly town. Most of them were in 
the flush of early manhood, when the veins tingle with life, 
and the blood bounds forward, like a river from the hills, 
towards the great ocean of human activity. In their hearts 
were all the passion of youth, all the love of life, all the 
ambitious yearnings for the prizes of a rational existence. 
Some of them perished after valiant service on many a hard 
fought field, and when the light of the new day for their 
country had scarcely begun to dawn out of the perilous 
night of the great convulsion, pouring out their generous 
blood, in Mr. Webster's grandeur of phrase, "before they 
knew whether it would fertilize a land of freedom or of 
bondage." They honored you and died for you, and you 
can do no less than to hold them in perpetual remem- 
brance. 



186 ORATION. 

This monument which you raise differs widely in its pur- 
pose and significance from the massive structures which 
commemorate the great events of former times. The tem- 
ples and statues, mausoleums and shrines, pyramids and 
obelisks of the Old World, while they perpetuate the glory 
of a few leaders and kings, also mark the inferiority and 
debasement of the body of the people. It is the glory of 
our age and country that the people are emerging from 
their thraldom and at last coming to their great estate. In 
our modern life, under the influence of universal enlighten- 
ment, we have learned that there are no demigods, — that 
men are but men, and none without touches of human 
frailty ; and as to those in authority under our institutions, 

" A breath can make them, as a breath has made." 

We set up no deities, and we confer no orders of nobility, 
however great the service rendered. In 1813, when Wel- 
lington returned from that long wrestle with the power of 
Napoleon on the Peninsula, England gave him a dukedom 
and £400,000, or 12,000,000, which would represent the 
princely sum of five millions to-day. We did nothing 
of the kind. We gave Grant the presidency and our 
undying love and gratitude, but no baubles of wealth and 
luxury, no pompous title, and uo enormous gratuity wrung 
from the sweat and tears, the poverty and degradation, of 
the common people. This marks the difference between 
the England of 1813 and the America of only fifty years 
later, — the transition from the day of heroes to that of 
heroism. We reserve our gifts, our gratuities, our charities 
and tender offices, for the common soldier in the ranks. 
We have paid already more than a thousand million dollars 
in pensions, and we are carrying a pension roll of a hundred 
millions a year, and will continue to carry it without a mur- 
mur. We have established Homes for Disabled Veterans in 
twenty states of the Union, and we spend hundreds of thou- 
sands every year for the relief of the widows and orphans 
of those who counted their own lives not dear if they could 



OEATION. 187 

but save this goodly inheritance of free government. It 
was said of old that the whole earth is the monument of 
great men. We have come to the understanding that still 
more truly and essentially is it also the monument of the 
common people, without whose labor, suffering, and sustain- 
ing strength great men could have done but little to subdue 
the earth and make it the home of civilized man. 

It is a felicitous circumstance, which invests this monu- 
ment with an interest altogether peculiar, that the nucleus 
of the fund which has created it was donated by Miss Tay- 
lor, the noble lady whose life was identified with the educa- 
tional institutions and the prosperity and honorable name 
of your town. It is one of the chief titles of the town to 
the conspicuous position it holds in the world, that here was 
inaugurated the experiment of a higher education for women 
in America. Here the movement was commenced which 
has revolutionized public opinion and ripened into the 
female seminaries and colleges of our country, which are 
opening to woman a broader unfolding of her faculties, a 
larger career, a deeper influence, a profounder respect, and 
an intellectual and moral destiny matching that of her 
brother. Very largely are you indebted to the noble 
women who have lived among you, or been born and bred 
here, for the impulse which has given you your libraries, 
academies, and churches. We should be ungenerous to-day 
not to recognize in the fullest degree the grand part women 
are taking in modern life. Who does not know that their 
opinions, sympathies, and support are the vital breath of 
every good cause ? Especially is this true of the temper- 
ance cause, of religion in all its bearings, even of politics, 
and all the charities and works of humanity that denote the 
high-water mark of our civilization. Every noble enter- 
prise, every honest conviction touching the public welfare, 
and all the varied interests of society, find the sources of 
that strength and power in the mind and heart of woman. 
What the American Union owes to her, the story of woman's 
part in the war, her work in the hospital, in the sanitary 



188 ORATION. 

commission, at the bedside of the sick and dying, her 
patience, her endurance of sufferings that no man can 
know as she buckled the armor upon husband, father, son, 
and lover, and as she followed him in his battles, his wounds, 
his sickness, and his death, — that can never be told. If 
this address were wholly devoted to the work of women in 
the war, even here in our little state of New Hampshire 
alone it would be impossible to recite her claims to our 
gratitude and remembrance. Let us rejoice, therefore, that 
we are indebted to a noble woman for the initial impetus to 
this memorial, and that the citizens were only required to 
supplement her benefaction; and let this shaft never be 
looked upon without a silent tribute of honor and gratitude 
to Miss Emma L. Taylor, who, alas! has been called up 
higher, and cannot be with us save in the spirit in this ser- 
vice to-day. 

If there be any single lesson which more than any other 
should be enforced upon us by this occasion, it seems to me 
that we gain from it a clear realization of our personal duty 
as citizens. The men whom we commemorate did the duty 
laid on them with sublime fidelity and courage. But duties 
vary with occasions. They were equal to the emergencies 
of their day and generation. Happily we are spared the 
awful necessity of perilling our lives in battle ; but there 
are other calls upon us not less imperative and exigent. 
The courage which these our comrades displayed on the 
field of battle is needed now in social life, in politics, in con- 
duct and character, in dealing with the problems that are 
constantly arising to agitate us anew, and demand of us new 
labor, devotion, and self-surrender. And how can we bet- 
ter honor the memory of those who gave their lives for the 
Union, than by showing a like heroism in the civic duties 
and dangers of to-day and the coming years ? We may 
hope that the race of war is nearly run. The great ques- 
tions of the future, those 

" Unsettled questions that have no pity for the repose of nations," 



ORATION. 189 

are to be settled in peaceful fields and ways, in the realm 
of debate, in the town-meeting, the discussions of the press, 
of the platform, and of legislative halls. Such are the ques- 
tions of temperance, and the slow poison, demoralization 
and ruin of body and soul to be averted from the nation ; 
the adjustment of the relations of labor and capital, upon 
which all public economy hinges; the control of great 
moneyed corporations and combinations, to the end that 
mammonism shall not dominate the government and subvert 
public liberty; the question of education, involving the 
supremacy of the public school and its freedom from secta- 
rian influence and control ; — upon the proper solution of 
these and such questions depend our future peace and har- 
mony. Burke, only a little more than a century ago, spoke 
of this country of ours as " a little speck, scarce visible in 
the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle 
rather than a formed body, which serves for little more 
than to amuse us with stories of savage men and uncouth 
manners." To-day it embraces sixty millions of people. It 
is richer by far than any other on the face of the globe, 
with resources yet undeveloped of colossal magnitude. Its 
domain is broader than the world over which the Roman 
eagles flew, its commerce vexes every sea, its colors wave 
in every breeze, its sails are bathed in the light of the 
Southern Cross and the constellations of the northern sky, 
and its influence reaches every cabin and every cabinet in 
the world. The cause of our estrangement among ourselves 
is gone ; nobody laments its disappearance. The South has 
rolled the heavy burden from her shoulders, and bounds 
forward like a strong man to run the race of empire ; and, 
with slavery gone forever, the last pretence has gone for a 
conflict between the sections, the last bar to equal rights 
and a universal liberty. But still we find no rest and no 
escape from the obligations which pursue us ever. " Eternal 
vigilance is the price of liberty." Even if our own rights 
are beyond attack, we must not and cannot be stupid and 
indifferent spectators of the wrongs of others. Let us ever 



190 ORATION. 

feel that whenever the rights of the humblest citizen are 
assailed, the cause for which our comrades died is again 
menaced, and that until those rights are vindicated and 
made safe it is our duty to stand again to our guns, and 
strike, if need be, for the justice and freedom which the 
Republic represents. Beyond all things, indifference to the 
problems and duties of our own day is intolerable. I am 
aware that it has become quite the fashion for some people 
to disparage our institutions, to depreciate our public men 
and our political system, and to import their ideas as they 
do their clothes. This is mischievous and contemptible. 
When our educated classes come generally to belittle their 
own country, and count it vulgar to vote and take an inter- 
est in politics, the eclipse of our liberties is not far distant. 
" I have an ambition," says Lord Chatham ; " it is the ambi- 
tion to deliver to my posterity those rights of freedom which 
I have inherited from my ancestors." This ambition 
should also be ours. We are debtors, and must remain so, 
to our ancestors, and we must pay the debt to our posterity. 
They will justly hold us responsible to transmit the great 
heritage we have received. 

As a perpetual reminder of what is most glorious in our 
past, as a step towards the perpetuation of all that is best in 
our national life, and in full confidence that we thus honor 
our comrades and ourselves, this column is erected to and 
for and by the common people of this renowned township. 
Here in their midst, by the firesides for which these men 
offered their lives, here where it will be seen daily by their 
neighbors and friends, by their children and children's chil- 
dren, through the coming years, we raise this memorial, this 
calm and undaunted face of the American volunteer soldier, 
and we bid it " All hail ! " Its pledge to the dead is, that 
" their bodies are buried in peace, but their name liveth 
evermore ;" and to the living, that while they live, " when 
the ear hears them it shall bless them, and when the eye 
sees them it shall give witness to them." Let its high 
serenity subdue all faction, all intolerance, all fear. Let it 



ORATION. 191 

admonish us to be true ; let it lift up our thoughts to grat- 
itude, to patriotism, to unselfishness, to a nobler life ! 

You have engraved the names of living and dead with 
equal honor upon this pillar, and in language of Doric sim- 
plicity you have dedicated it " in honor of the men of Derry 
who fought for the Union, 1861-1865." I unite with you 
in the aspiration that their fame may be fresh and their 
memory glorious long after Time has erased their names 
from this tablet, and when the stone itself shall have crum- 
bled to dust. 

As yonder sun slowly sinks behind the western horizon, 
we know that he will again appear, and 

" trick his beams, 
And flame in the forehead of the morning sky." 

So we think of our comrades who fought for the Union, 
and have gone out from among us in the tempest of battle, 
and from beds of disease and suffering. We feel irresistibly 
that their lives have set only to rise again and be " clothed 
upon with a more glorious body," and that their work for 
the great cause of Liberty and Light has but just begun. 

" In the dream of the Northern poets, 

The brave who in battle die 
Fight on in shadowy phalanx 

In the field of the upper sky ; 
And, as we read the sounding rhyme, 

The reverent fancy hears 
The ghostly ring of the viewless swords, 

And the clash of the spectral spears. 

" We think with imperious questionings 

Of the brothers that we have lost, 
And we strive to track in death's mystery 

The flight of each valiant ghost. 
The Northern myth comes back to us, 

And we feel through our sorrow's night 
That those young souls are striving still 

Somewhere for the truth and light. 



192 ORATION. 

" It was not their time for rest and sleep ; 

Their hearts beat high and strong ; 
In their fresh veins the blood of youth 

Was singing its hot, sweet song. 
The open heaven bent over them, 

Mid flowers their lithe feet trod ; 
Their lives lay vivid in light, and blest 

By the smiles of woman and God. 



" There is no power in the gloom of hell 

To quench those spirits' fire ; 
There is no charm in the bliss of heaven 

To forbid them not aspire ; 
But somewhere in the eternal plan 

That strength, that life survive, 
And like the files on Lookout's crest, 

Above Death's clouds they strive. 

" A chosen corps — they are marching on 

In a wider field than ours ; 
Those bright battalions still fulfil 

The scheme of the heavenly powers ; 
And high brave thoughts float down to us, — 

The echoes of that far fight, 
Like the flash of the distant pickets' guns 

Through the shades of the severing night. 

" No fear for them ! In the lower field 

Let us toil with arms unstained, 
That at last we be worthy to stand with them 

On the shining heights they 've gained. 
We shall meet and greet in closing ranks, 

In Time's declining sun, 
When the bugles of God shall sound recall, 

And the Battle of Life be won ! " 



ADDRESS. 



[Delivered at Parnell Meeting, City Hall, Dover, N. H , May 4, 1886.] 

Mr. President and Fellow-Citizens: — I cannot 
claim a very intelligent interest in the important questions 
this meeting has been called to consider, for I do not 
profess to have given them that careful study which Irish- 
men would naturally devote to them. But I am not indif- 
ferent to the interests of freedom, wherever they are found, 
and whenever I refuse to raise my voice in an humble way, 
in advocacy of the principles of religious and political 
liberty in all nations, may my tongue cleave to the roof of 
my mouth. A very grave crisis has arrived in the affairs 
of Ireland, and her connection with the British empire 
seems about to be placed on a new basis. After centuries 
of suffering and wrong, Ireland seems to be on the eve of a 
political regeneration, through the courage, the eloquence, 
the energy, the persistency of her sons, and especially of 
that great leader of these later years, Mr. Parnell. He has 
unflinchingly held up her banner and voiced her demands, 
till, all other resources and methods of reducing her to 
submission failing, at length that magnificent old com- 
moner, Gladstone, yields to the reason, and the conscience, 
and the necessity of the age, and has formulated a plan of 
settlement which recognizes the right of the Irish people 
to a controlling voice in her own concerns — in the laws 
which are to govern her — and, in his own expressive 
language, " invests the law in Ireland with the aspect of a 
native and domestic rather than an alien institution." 

This scheme may not be in every particular well advised, 
or best calculated to promote the liberty and the nationality 



194 ADDRESS. 

of Ireland; but we must judge the plan as not by any 
means a perfected one : it is an experiment, it is a step 
forward, a feeling of the ground before us, as all true 
statesmanship must be ; and as such it seems to me there 
can be no doubt that it is a step, and the first firm and 
sensible step for 700 years of controversy, in the right 
direction. It may and doubtless will have to be modified 
in its details, both now and from time to time hereafter, as 
reference shall point out the necessity. 

When rightly considered, statesmanship is not a mere 
matter of theory, but more largely, I may say almost en- 
tirely, a matter of experience ; and most happily experience 
has settled some vexed questions in regard to Ireland ; 
among others, that coercion is and must ever be a failure. 
That has been the policy of England under the domination 
of the English landed aristocracy for seven centuries. Her 
policy has been that of coercion of the Irish will by every 
means in her power: by restrictive commercial regulations, 
which have ruined her trade, her commerce, and her indus- 
tries ; by religious oppression ; by the tyranny of landlords ; 
by penal laws of the crudest character, making a code of 
Draconian ferocity only to be enforced by fire and sword. 
All these have failed to crush the Irish spirit, and her cries 
for freedom have never ceased, but are to-day louder and 
more imperative than ever before. That policy has not pro- 
duced peace, nor prosperity, nor comfort, nor contentment, 
to say nothing of liberty. On the contrary, there have 
come of it famine, distress, ignorance, poverty, degradation, 
disaffection, a sense of wrong, and a bitterness of heart, a 
national animosity ever on the point of bursting into un- 
controllable rebellion, and, in the background, those appall- 
ing miseries which give a lurid light to the pages of Irish 
history. 

Therefore Mr. Gladstone starts upon the great measure 
which he proposes with the advantage of a clear concession 
that all other plans, at least all opposing plans, have failed ; 
and such is the danger of this Irish question to England 



ADDRESS. 195 

to-clay, and such the inexorable necessit}* - of doing something, 
that it is incumbent upon his opponents to either j'ield to his 
plan or present a better one. 

As we examine this great scheme of Mr. Gladstone's, we 
can clearly see what a momentous change it involves in 
the traditional policy of England towards Ireland, but it is 
a mere recognition which that great man has the manli- 
ness and the courage to make of the prevailing currents of 
political history in the last century. The great political 
discovery of the last hundred years is that of the federative 
principle which we in America have put into practical 
operation, the federation of great political states into one 
larger state for imperial purposes, while each retains con- 
trol of all its local affairs, and indeed has supreme authority 
over most of the concerns of government which affect the 
happiness and welfare of its people from day to day. That 
is the American principle. That is the American idea, 
and under its influence federative republicanism has been 
making rapid strides in Europe and throughout the civilized 
world. England has held out firmly against it ; but it is 
a striking fact that many of her greatest men, her phil- 
osophic minds, her thinkers, such men as Matthew Arnold, 
Mr. Froude, and Mr. Labouchere, not to speak of her states- 
men, have become converts to this system of government, 
and are pointing out the absurdity of undertaking to man- 
age all the petty local affairs of the great British empire 
in one legislative body, the Houses of parliament in West- 
minster Hall. Therefore all are turning to what is called 
Home Rule ; and Home Rule, the watchword of Irish agi- 
tation for some years past, is nothing more nor less than 
that which is enjoyed by law and, under the constitution 
of this country, by every state in the American Union. 

In considering the scheme of Mr. Gladstone, we in Amer- 
ica might think he might and should have more closely cop- 
ied our own methods of securing Home Rule to the people of 
our states. But we must bear in mind that the institutions 
of England, hoary with age, and rooted in the prejudices 



196 ADDRESS. 

of centuries, would perhaps require a complete revolution 
to adapt them to the application of the federative principle. 
I have thought, and am still inclined to believe, that Mr. 
Gladstone has made a mistake in proposing to take away 
the Irish representation in the British Parliament. It 
seems to me that Irish peers should sit in the British house 
of lords as long as that moribund institution is allowed to 
cumber the ground at all, and especially that Irish mem- 
bers should sit in the house of commons, to take their part 
in all imperial concerns, all those not included in the juris- 
diction of the Irish parliament. Why should they not? 
They are to be governed by them, and why should they 
not help make them ? Moreover, it appears to me that this 
would be one of the strongest ties of loyalty imaginable to 
bind the British islands together in a connection which 
ought never to be broken. 

I believe that the connection between Ireland and Eng- 
land is a natural one, ordained by God and Nature, and 
that it is not for the interest of either to ever break it. 
Geographical laws settle it. The whole course of modern 
history and modern politics is pointing to large states, 
great political communities under one general government, 
as the necessity, and the true interest of mankind. In our 
own time has come about the unification of Italy under 
the leadership of Cavour, Garibaldi, and Victor Emmanuel, 
and the consolidation of the German empire under Bis- 
marck and Kaiser William, redounding unquestionably to 
the power, the glory, the happiness, and the freedom of 
those great peoples. And our own struggle for the Union 
twenty years ago, let it never be forgotten, was in the 
same direction and for the same principle. We fought 
that there might be only one nation on this continent; we 
proposed to reenact the laws of Nature which Mr. Webster 
was unwilling to do ; and we vindicated that principle by 
a lavish expenditure of blood and treasure. But we 
deemed that system, the union of the states, perfectly con- 
sistent with liberty, and we would have stood in line of 



ADDRESS. 197 

battle again, and would now at any moment, against any 
attempt to deprive the people of any state of that Home 
Rule, which is the ancestral privilege of each, and the very 
breath of life of our public liberty. Let us understand 
this. New Hampshire is a free state, but not in all re- 
spects a sovereign state ; New York is a free state, but not 
in all respects a sovereign state ; Massachusetts, free and 
glorious commonwealth as she is, is yet not sovereign. 
She is a part of a great whole ; not a subject part, much less 
a despised and proletarian member, but an integral part, 
"bone of its bone, and flesh of its flesh," and partaking of 
all its life and energy, and glory ; not sovereign in all 
respects, but free in all essential ones and gladly rendering 
that allegiance to the one great national entity, the United 
States of America, whose service is perfect freedom. And 
so, applying the same principles to the union of the British 
islands, I believe that God has placed them there in the 
•seas together, and destined them to live together forever, 
and "whom God hath joined, let not man put asunder." 
But in the name of liberty, let their connection be that of 
equals, not the connection of the slave and his master, the 
wolf and the lamb, the lion and his prey. Smarting under 
the sense of injustice and oppression, and the contempt of 
a lordly aristocracy, some Irishmen may have sometimes 
thought and spoken of an utter and everlasting separation 
from her oppressor, but I do not understand that to be 
the deliberate desire of her leaders or her people today, or 
at any time. That measure of liberty, of Home Rule, and 
participation in the government of the kingdom which is 
perfectly consistent with the unity of the empire, that I 
understand is all Mr. Parnell asks, all that the Irish people 
expect, all that Mr. Gladstone proposes to give. And if 1 
read her history aright, that and that only has been the 
object of her unceasing struggle for centuries ; that only 
was desired and proclaimed publicly by Flood and Grattan 
and Plunket and O'Connell, and their illustrious co-work- 
ers before and since their time. Grattan especially, whom I 



198 ADDRESS. 

am inclined to think of as almost if not quite the greatest of 
all Irishmen, never failed to declare the full sympathy of Ire- 
land with England, and the compatibility of an ardent love of 
independence with a devoted attachment to the connection. 
He said, " I am desirous above all things, next to the liberty 
of the country, not to accustom the Irish mind to an alien 
or suspicious habit with regard to Great Britain." And 
Burke, the greatest Irishman ever born, if Grattan was not, 
said, " I would have Ireland governed by Irish notions and 
Irish prejudices, but I am convinced that the more Ireland 
is under Irish government, the more she will be bound to 
English interests." That statement animated Grattan on 
the 16th of April, 1782, 104 years ago almost to a day, 
when, after the struggle of many years, he passed through 
the parted ranks of the Irish volunteers into the old Par- 
liament House of Ireland to move the emancipation of his 
country. Then it was that he pronounced those glowing 
words that will dwell forever on the lips and in the mem- 
ories of men. "I am now," he exclaimed, "to address a 
free people. Ages have passed away, and this is the first 
moment in which you could be distinguished by that 
appellation. I found Ireland on her knees ; I watched 
over her with a paternal solicitude ; I have traced her pro- 
gress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Ire- 
land is now a nation. In that character I hail her, and, 
bowing in her august presence, I say Esto perpetua I '" 

That day the independence of Ireland was proclaimed and 
acquiesced in by the English government. But she was 
not yet prepared for freedom. Parliamentary reform could 
not then be accomplished, and eighteen years of systematic 
bribery and corruption of the Irish Parliament accomplished 
the union in 1800, and the overthrow of her parliamentary 
existence. Since then what a nightmare of horrors has 
been her portion ! The never ending tragedy of oppression 
and wrong, of tyranny and resistance, of hunger and degra- 
dation and exile of her children of genius, lit up only by 
the fierce resistance of her sons, whose hearts were aflame, 



ADDRESS. 199 

and whose lips were on tire with eloquence, as if they had 
been touched by a coal from the altars of God ! She has 
had her Flood, she has had her Grattan, her Burke, her 
Cumin, her Sheridan, her Emmett, her Phillips, her O'Con- 
nell, her O'Brien, her Meagher, and no one of them has been 
false to Ireland or to Irish independence. They have 
voiced her oppressions, her clamors for justice, her appeals 
for liberty, and in her defence, and in her sacred name, 
they have produced those masterpieces of human speech 
that will live as long as the English tongue survives, or 
any read, with beating hearts and streaming eyes, the story 
of that struggle for liberty which illuminates and conse- 
crates the annals of mankind. 

The great men of her past are succeeded today by no un- 
equal footsteps, by Charles Stewart Parnell, who has the 
blood of Old Ironsides in his veins. By every fair standard 
Parnell is a very remarkable man ; and he has certainly 
shown a courage, a persistency, a patriotism, a sagacity, 
never surpassed in any age by a political leader. He has 
welded together the Irish people in a common purpose as no 
man ever has before ; and Ireland and Irishmen cannot be 
too grateful to him. I do not understand that he accepts 
Mr. Gladstone's scheme as any thing more than an install- 
ment of the ultimate liberties of his country. But if that bill 
is really of the nature we believe it to be, if it be the begin- 
ning of the end of a long struggle for freedom, if it be the 
herald of the termination of the strife of seven centuries, if 
her long night of oppression is about over and a new era for 
Ireland dawning, then indeed may Parnell, as he takes by 
universal acclaim the first seat in the new Parliament of Ire- 
land, with even more truth than Grattan, say, " At length I 
address a free people ; " and his statue, its foundations 
already laid deep and strong, will be built, and its capstone 
placed in every Irish heart the world over. 

But, for the grandeur of the prospects now unfolding 
to Ireland, another name is entitled scarcely less to the 
applause of Irishmen, the name of William Ewart Glad- 



200 ADDRESS. 

stone. This great man, at the age of seventy-six, the age 
of conservatism rather than of innovation, after more 
than fifty years of service in the front rank of English 
statesmen, after gaining laurels as a scholar and author 
which would give an} r man an immortal name, seems destined 
to make the pacification of Ireland, may I not say the com- 
plete reconciliation of England and Ireland, the crowning 
glory of his long and illustrious public career. This man, 
taller by the head than his contemporaries, looks over the 
mountain tops and sees the sun rising and ushering in a 
better day, before the morning rays have beamed on them 
and while they are still moping in the shadows of the old 
night. Sensitive to public opinion, sensitive to the progress 
of ideas, he discerns that the days of absolutism, that the 
days of despotic power, of coercion, and of repression, are 
gone by ; and with the courage of his convictions he comes 
forward and asks that England practise the doctrine she has 
so often inculcated upon others, that the concession of local 
self-government is not the way to sap or impair, but the 
way to strengthen and consolidate unity. And then he 
adds, in his own lofty language, "I ask that we apply to 
Ireland that happy experience which we have gained in 
England and Scotland, where the course of generations has 
now taught us, not as a dream or a theory but as practice 
and as life, that the best and surest foundation we can find 
to build upon is the foundation afforded by the affections, 
the convictions, and the will of the nation." Edmund 
Burke, in his well nigh universal prescience, knew this 
truth a century ago when he wrote, " I am convinced that 
no reluctant tie can be a strong one, and that a natural, 
cheerful alliance will be a far more secure link of connec- 
tion than any principle of subordination borne with grudg- 
ing and discontent." This is no new truth, but it is Glad- 
stone's title to glory that he was the first English premier 
to recognize in his dealings with Ireland, and act upon, a 
truth so profound and important. 

Let us not forget the great land measure, the scheme 



ADDRESS. 201 

for the nationalization of the land, which Mr. Gladstone 
has introduced along with and as part of his plan of Home 
Rule. I do not feel qualified, and I do not assume to pass 
on the merits of the land bill ; but every man who under- 
stands even the rudiments of the Irish question knows that 
one of the chief instrumentalities of the oppression and 
misery of Ireland is the possession of the land by a few 
aristocrats to the exclusion of the people, and that no 
effectual reform in the Irish condition can be accomplished 
without wresting the land from the hands of those who 
have usurped its ownership. But now our hope is that 
absenteeism, with all its scandalous wrong and cruelty, the 
tyranny of grasping landlords, and the eviction of Irish 
tenants because they cannot pay an impossible rent, all 
this is to be swept away. God grant that a system so mon- 
strous may not stand upon the order of its going, but go at 
once ; and happy shall we be in America if we awake in 
season to the imperative obligation to keep God's heritage 
of the land in the hands of the people and out of the 
ravenous jaws of capitalists and landsharks. 

This at any rate we may now say, whatever may be the 
fate of Mr. Gladstone's bill in the form in which it is now 
before parliament and the British people, in any event Ire- 
land will never return to her old condition. A new depar- 
ture has been taken, coercion is a thing of the past, and 
Home Rule in some form or other is a certain fact of the 
future. Mr. Gladstone's action has made that inevitable, 
and it is my belief that the great body of the workingmen of 
England, who now hold her sceptre of dominion, will rally 
round Gladstone, and carry his measure, modified perhaps 
by the discussion and agitation of the fiery ordeal through 
which it is passing, triumphantly through the house of com- 
mons. It will be a bitter pill for the house of lords, but 
they won't resist it long. If they do, the men who Mat- 
thew Arnold says are "impervious to ideas," will stand a 
chance to learn something in another way. To speak fig- 
uratively, the streets of London will be strewn with the 



202 ADDRESS. 

wrecks of shields and ducal coronets and coats of arms, and 
such trumpery, as the laborers of England pass to the pos- 
session of their inherent rights. 

And then will come the crucial test of the Irish race. 
If it can bear prosperity as it has borne adversity, if it can 
be as true to freedom in possession as it has been to free- 
dom when denied, a great future unfolds before her. Some 
one has said that God hammers every nation on the anvil 
of the fates of which he ever intends to make anything. 
Ireland has certainly stood her share of the hammering, 
and let us hope that she will know how to use that instal- 
ment of liberty which seems about to be paid to her uncon- 
querable spirit and patient endurance. Let us hope that 
she will be equal to her opportunities, and that taking up 
the line of march as a great and free nation, she will in the 
future as in the past help to continue the unending proces- 
sion of civic triumphs which have built up that great power 
" whose morning drumbeat, marching with the sun, and 
keeping company with the hours, encircles the earth with 
a continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of 
England."' 

Meantime we in America have our duties to perform in 
this emergency. Nothing is more certain than the influ- 
ence of America in all the great movements of Europe. It 
is evident, particularly, that the views entertained in the 
United States in regard to England and Ireland are having 
great influence upon the course of public affairs in Great 
Britian. Let us bring that influence to bear upon the 
English parliament in every proper way. Let us proclaim 
the sympathy of America with Ireland by all those expres- 
sions and agencies of public opinion which, nowdays, 
far more than cannon and bayonets, determine national 
policies and measures of legislation. Let us, by such meet- 
ings as this, held all over the country, stand by Parneli 
and Gladstone, and hold up the hands and sustain the 
hearts of all those who are making this gallant struggle for 
Irish emancipation. There are more Irishmen today in 



ADDRESS. 203 

the United States than in Ireland and England together. 
But not Irishmen alone are interested in the issue of this 
question, but every man who loves political liberty, and 
desires to see all poeples in the enjoyment of freedom. 

I have quoted the beautiful words in which Daniel Web- 
ster paid tribute to the glory and majesty of the English 
dominion. Let me bring these imperfect remarks to a close 
by repeating his far more weighty and memorable words 
in commenting on the relation of Russia to Hungary. 
These words when spoken were heard across the ocean, and 
I would they might be heard again and heeded by every 
man in England who dreams of holding Ireland still longer 
in subjection. Said he, "There is something on earth 
greater than arbitrary or despotic power. The lightning 
has its power, and the whirlwind has its power, and the 
earthquake has its power, but there is something among 
men more capable of shaking despotic thrones than light- 
ning, whirlwind, or earthquake, and that is the excited and 
aroused indignation of the whole civilized world." 



INDEX. 



Preface by Senator Chandler, 
Biography of Daniel Hall, 



PAGE 

3 



ADDRESSES. 










Abraham Lincoln, . 








13 


John P. Hale, ..... 








31 


Ulysses S. Grant, .... 








118 


John B. Gough, .... 








132 


Daniel M. Christie, 








140 


Edward F. Noyes, 








158 


Andrew H. Young, .... 








163 


Oration delivered at Derry, N. H., 








170 


Address at Parnell Meeting, Dover, N 


.H., 






193 



V 






v ^-^SjF v : —-> ^/^z +» 














* , o " ° ♦ 










x^ 









£ ^. 





\* "" <y *u °"° *° ^ 






r. 5 * ,o 










«r - » * °„ "> 

OOBBSBROS. ,,J> • ^ 

LIBRARY aiNOINO >3 /M ° 

!T.-AUGUSTAl?|Sr** «£* 

i^ FLA. ' J? ^ 









